The temple that Solomon built is destroyed, the temple treasury is looted, and the city is ransacked. The people of Judah are sent off into exile in Babylon.

The Lord’s patience has run out and he now brings the Assyrians to invade the northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 BC. They are carried off in exile to Assyria and now only the Kingdom of Judah (with the capital city Jerusalem) stands.

David wanted to build a permanent temple for the Lord. But God tells David that his son, Solomon, will be the one to build a temple. But this passage has a greater meaning.

David is a shepherd, a vocation that requires selfless sacrifice for the well-being of the sheep. This is the type of king that God wants. And it is the pattern for the coming of King Jesus, the Good Shepherd (John 10).

The presence of the Lord went ahead of God’s People to fight the battles and clear the way for them. God is fighting for his People. He is clearing the way for us to enter his rest. He will do the work; we must obey and follow Him.

The center of God’s commands for his children is that they would love him. He redeemed us so that we would love him.

This unblemished lamb that dies as a substitute so that the angel of the Lord would pass over them looks ahead to the day when Jesus, the perfect sacrificial Lamb, would die as a substitute for his people so that they may be redeemed from bondage and be free to worship Him.

Abraham’s utter trust in God’s promises and his plan is the foundation for the gospel. We are called to trust God just as thoroughly.

God promised to give Abraham a son and a line of descendants as numerous as the stars, but warns that his family line will be enslaved in a foreign land before they are redeemed and given the Promised Land.

The most fundamental reaction to sin is shame. It is at the heart of our separation from God.