1 Kings 5:13-18 “King Solomon drafted forced labor out of all Israel, and the draft numbered 30,000 men. And he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in shifts. They would be a month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the draft. Solomon also had 70,000 burden-bearers and 80,000 stonecutters in the hill country,besides Solomon’s 3,300 chief officers who were over the work, who had charge of the people who carried on the work. At the king’s command they quarried out great, costly stones in order to lay the foundation of the house with dressed stones. So Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the men of Gebal did the cutting and prepared the timber and the stone to build the house.”
The shadows and types of the Old Testament are wonderful things. Everywhere we look we see pictures of spiritual realities of the Kingdom of God. One of the clearest shadows we are given is that of Solomon’s temple. It was built to be a symbol of the dwelling place of God, and as such it pointed to the spiritual realities of His dwelling place, including the Church collectively (Ephesians 2:19-22), the individual members of the Church (1 Corinthians 6:19), the Lord Jesus Christ (John 2:19), and Heaven (Psalm 11:4). In Ephesians 2:19-21 believers are told that they “are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” So here the Bible points to the building materials of the temple (the timber and stone from the passage of 1 Kings 5 above) as types of the people who make up the temple. But what of the servants mentioned in 1 Kings 5. To what might they be pointing?
In thinking about this, it has occurred to me that these servants are described in multiples of 10,000 (10,000; 20,000; 70,000; and 80,000). We also see that there was a hierarchy, as there were 3,300 officers who supervised this work. We see that, unlike the materials, these servants were not part of the temple. They just had a hand in building it. They worked with the materials, forming and shaping them, and making them ready so the temple could be built up. So, is there any language used elsewhere in the Bible that can be typified by such things?
I believe that there is. In Revelation 5:11 (NIV) we have one of the apostle John’s visions of heaven. We are told that he “looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand.” In Psalm 68:17 we are told that “The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them.” And in Daniel’s vision of “the Ancient of Days and his throne in heaven we are told he saw that “a stream of fire issued _and came out from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.” And so, like the tens of thousands of workers who served King Solomon in his efforts to build the temple, we see tens of thousands of angels serving the King of kings both in Heaven as well as on the earth.
In addition, like the fact that the workers on Solomon’s temple worked under 3,300 “chief officers,” there is a great hierarchy of the angels that serve the King of kings in heaven. We are told of angels, archangels, seraphim, and cherubim, and in Ephesians 6:12 we are told that such a hierarchy even extends to the realm of the evil angels, and their “rulers, . . . authorities, . . . cosmic powers over this present darkness, (and) . . . spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
In Hebrews 1:14 we are asked the following rhetorical question about the angels: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” Obviously, the answer to this question is “Yes.” We have many examples of this. Over and over again we see that angels have a role in the great work of God among men as he builds the holy temple spoken of in Ephesians 2.
For example, throughout Scriptures we are told of angels who came to earth as messengers. They told both Mary and Joseph of their great soon-to-be-born Son. They proclaimed to the shepherds, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’”(Luke 2:10-140. And there are many other places we are told about how the angels of God brought God’s Word to men, words that are now written for us in the Bible.
Angels are often seen as protectors of God’s people. We see it in the account in 2 Kings 19 as the Assyrian army came against the army of Israel at the time of King Hezekiah. We are told that in one night “the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians” (2 Kings 19:35). We see it in the account from 2 Kings 6 when the Syrian army threatened Israel at the time of Elisha. As Elisha’s servant quaked in fear “the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Please strike this people with blindness.’ So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17-18). In the New Testament we have the case of an angel that came to miraculously free Peter from prison in Acts 12, and in Matthew 2 we have the account of an angel that warned Mary and Joseph to flee to Egypt to escape from King Herod because of his plans to kill Jesus by killing every baby boy in Bethlehem who was under two years of age.
Angels are often sent by God to comfort His people or to otherwise encourage them in various ways. Jesus was ministered to in this way both in the wilderness when He was tempted by Satan and in the Garden of Gethsemane as he wrestled in agony as the crucifixion approached. We are told that it was an angel that rolled the stone away from Jesus’ tomb in Matthew 28:2. And we are told that the women who came to the tomb as well as Peter and John all saw angels there. Likewise, in Acts 1 we read that angels were present at Jesus’ Ascension: “And while they (i.e., the apostles) were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’”
And just as angels were serving God among His people throughout history of God’s Word as it was written, they continue to serve Him now. In fact, we are told in Hebrews 13:2 to “not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
There is much more that could be said about all this but suffice it to say that just as those thousands of servants did the work of the temple to which King Solomon called them in 1 Kings 5, there are myriads of angels serving the Lord among the people who are being built up into His great spiritual temple right now. It’s a wonderful reality that one day we will so much more fully understand. Our eyes will be opened to clearly realize the truth that during our time on earth, the angels had been continually serving us as “ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.” This extends even to little children, for didn’t Jesus say, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10)?
Praise the Lord!
Leave a Reply