Big Buts of the Bible

“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” —1 Kings 8:27

It must have been breathtaking.

After years of planning and construction, Solomon’s Temple was complete. This was the magnificent house David had dreamed of building for the Lord, and now his son had finished the work. The priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the Most Holy Place. Israel’s leaders gathered. Sacrifices were offered. The people assembled to celebrate one of the grandest moments in their history.

And then God showed up.

A cloud filled the Temple with the glory of the Lord so powerfully that the priests couldn’t continue their service. Imagine standing among the crowd that day. They had heard the stories of God’s presence with their ancestors—the cloud and fire in the wilderness, the tabernacle, the Ark—and now they were witnessing something extraordinary themselves. God had come to dwell among His people.

What a moment for worship. But…

How Big Is Your God?

Standing before the magnificent building he had constructed, Solomon suddenly seems overwhelmed by a thought much larger than the Temple itself:

“But will God really dwell on earth?”

It’s a remarkable question. Solomon looks at this extraordinary house of worship—and then looks, figuratively speaking, toward the heavens.

“The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”

There’s our big but, and what a wonderful one it is.

Solomon isn’t diminishing the Temple. This was a place God had chosen for His name to be honored, a place toward which His people would pray, a place associated with His presence among them.

But Solomon understood the difference between God choosing to meet people somewhere and people somehow containing God there.

Israel had built a house for God. They had not built a house big enough to hold Him. Neither could they. Neither can we.

Bigger Than the Building

We still have a tendency to associate God with places.

Churches. Sanctuaries. Chapels. Cathedrals. Places where we have worshiped, prayed, cried, celebrated, grieved, married, buried loved ones, or experienced moments when God seemed particularly near.

Those places can become sacred to us because of what happened there. But God is bigger than the building. Much bigger.

The heavens themselves cannot contain Him.

That’s difficult even to imagine. We can peer into space with increasingly powerful telescopes and discover galaxies unimaginably distant from our own. The observable universe stretches farther than our minds can comfortably comprehend.

But God is greater still.

We cannot construct a building large enough to contain Him. We cannot draw theological boxes large enough to contain Him. We cannot completely explain Him, diagram Him, categorize Him, or reduce Him to our understanding.

And yet this God desires to be known. That is where wonder becomes worship.

The Greater Wonder

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Solomon’s Temple wasn’t its size, its gold, its craftsmanship, or even the cloud that filled it. It was that the God whom the heavens cannot contain chose to come near.

Think about that for a moment.

The infinite God makes Himself known to finite people. The Creator listens to the prayers of His creatures. The God beyond our comprehension invites us into relationship. And the biblical story doesn’t end with Solomon’s Temple. Centuries later, John would describe Jesus with astonishingly simple words: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

The God Solomon knew could not be contained by the highest heavens came nearer still.

Jesus walked dusty roads. He sat at tables. He touched people others wouldn’t touch. He welcomed children. He noticed people hiding in crowds. He wept with grieving friends. He sat beside a Samaritan woman at a well. He allowed frightened, confused, imperfect people to walk beside Him. The uncontainable God came close enough to touch. 

And ultimately, close enough to be wounded.

Wonder Today

Maybe that’s something worth carrying into worship today. Sometimes we can make God smaller without realizing we’re doing it.

We confine Him to Sunday morning. To a church building. To a particular tradition. To our understanding of how He ought to work. To the boundaries of what we believe He can possibly do with our circumstances—or with us.

Then Solomon stands before the Temple and reminds us: The heavens cannot contain Him.

And yet the wonder isn’t merely that God is unimaginably big. It’s that He comes unimaginably close. The God who cannot be contained knows you. Hears you. Sees you. Invites you near.

So perhaps worship begins today where Solomon’s did—with a little astonishment.

Look at the world around you. Look toward the heavens if you get the chance. Consider for a moment the immensity of the One who made it all.

But don’t stop there. Remember the greater wonder: The God whom the heavens cannot contain has chosen to draw near.And maybe the only appropriate response to something that astonishing is worship.