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Real Prayers for Real LifePart 5 of 9

Solomon – Worship (1 Kings 8)

Stephen Cave
1 Kings 8
2 August 2026
30 min

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0:01 Morning. I really wish that we had a video of the story that gave rise to the prayer that we're looking at today because the drama around it was incredible. King Solomon had summoned all the leaders and the people to gather in Jerusalem and the Levites brought in the ark of the covenant to settle in this incredible temple that Solomon had built for the Lord. And there's an amazing experience of the glory of God descending. And words couldn't possibly describe what it must have been like. Anything that we can conjure up just wouldn't do it justice. But as he leads the people in worship, Solomon then prays to the Lord in front of all the people. It's a really long prayer.

0:51 But it's too good not to read a good part of it. So I'm going to read it now from 1 Kings chapter 8 and it's going to be sections of it. So if you're following it in your Bible, you're going to have to jump down with me a little bit. Otherwise, just you can read it on the wall and listen. So here's how Solomon prayed. Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below. You who keep your covenant of love with your servants, who continue wholeheartedly in your way. You have kept your promise to your servant David, my father.

1:22 With your mouth you have promised, and with your hand you have fulfilled it as it is today. But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot continue. How much less this temple I have built! Yet give attention to your servant's prayer and his plea for mercy. Lord my God, hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day. May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, my name shall be there, so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays towards this place. Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people, Israel, when they pray toward this place.

2:08 Hear from heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive. When your people, Israel, have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you, and when they turn back to you and give praise to your name, praying and making supplication to you in this temple, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people, Israel, and bring them back to the land you gave to their ancestors. When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you, and when they pray toward this place and give praise to your name and turn from your sin because you have afflicted them, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel. Teach them the right way to live and send rain on the land you gave your people for an inheritance. When famine or plague comes to the land, or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, or when an enemy besieges them in any of their cities, whatever disaster or disease may come, and when a prayer or plea is made by anyone among your people Israel, being aware of the afflictions of their own hearts and spreading out their hands towards this temple, then hear from heaven your dwelling place. Forgive and act. Deal with everyone according to all they do, since you know their hearts, for you alone know every human heart. So that they will fear you all the time they live in the land you gave our ancestors.

3:35 When they sin against you, for there's no one who does not sin, and you become angry with them and give them over to their enemies, who take them captive to their own lands, far away or near, and if they have a change of heart in the land where they are held captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captors and say, we have sinned, we have done wrong, we have acted wickedly. And if they turn back to you with all their heart and soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive and pray to you toward the land you gave their ancestors, toward the city you have chosen and the temple I have built for your name, then from heaven, your dwelling place, hear their prayer and their plea and uphold their cause. and forgive your people who have sinned against you. Forgive all the offences they have committed against you and cause their captors to show them mercy. So it was back in February that Chris asked me to speak on this prayer of Solomon for today. And I've had it floating around my mind since then, but right from the outset, I had a really niggling question. that came alongside it. And it's kind of different to the theme of the prayer.

4:49 And yet, as you'll see, it's not unconnected. And here's my niggling question. How do we handle Christian leaders who fall or who let us down? Now, this is a live issue because even in the last couple of years some significant Christian figures have either been found out or have admitted to serious failures. Sexual immorality, abuse of power, financial impropriety, plagiarism, to name just a few. And for some of us it has been leaders that we have greatly admired or have learned from or even have been friends with. So what do we do with their books and their sermons or their advice or their memory? And actually it doesn't have to be just famous people.

5:41 It could just as well be the people who have had a great influence on our lives personally and yet who somehow or other have made terrible mistakes. And how we respond to it isn't easy. because we get messed up, we've got probably very mixed emotions about it, and we maybe even get conflicting advice on it. Some of it may be very forceful to the extent that it then leads to fallouts amongst those who take different perspectives. And so, as well as the initial damage, there's even more damage done because of that. Now what's all of that got to do with the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem? Well, maybe more than we think. Because you see, I don't think we can separate the content of the prayer from the person who prayed it.

6:40 And if we take a look at Solomon and some of the different things going on in his life, we get a bit of an eye-opener. This prayer we read from First Kings 8. This section of the story is confined to First Kings chapter 6 through 8. And the background is that Solomon's father David had wanted to build a temple for the Lord but God stopped him. And he told him that was going to be a task for his son Solomon. And so in chapter 6 and 7, we get a detailed description of the process and what the temple looked like. And then chapter 8 starts with that dramatic telling of the ark of the covenant containing God's law being brought to the temple with great fanfare and worship and sacrificing. And it builds up to this crescendo.

7:32 when the glory of the Lord fills the temple and God's presence is seen with His people. In many ways repeating what the original plan of the Garden of Eden was. And maybe also foreshadowing Pentecost when the Spirit of God descended on the early church. God coming to dwell within His people. And in response to this, Solomon leads the people in even more worship. And then he prays that great prayer that we have read. And I see if we could just stop there, that would be so much easier. And this talk would be so much easier.

8:17 But I find myself not being able to stop there because I'm going, this doesn't sit easy with me because if you read on in the next bit of the story, you find other sides to Solomon. Let me read just a couple of excerpts. In chapter nine, after Pharaoh's daughter had come up from the city of David to the palace Solomon had built for her, he constructed the terraces. Now, think about that. Solomon is the king of Israel. Think about Israel's history with Egypt. What on earth possessed Solomon to think that the king of Israel should marry the daughter of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And as if that wasn't bad enough, jump on to chapter 11, where we're told that King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter.

9:14 They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods. Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. And as Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God. He followed Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord. On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the detestable god of Moab, and for Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites. That doesn't make great reading. A king who had led such a public demonstration of worship and devotion, who had prayed such a prayer, actually lived out his days in rebellion and apostasy.

10:23 And God was clear with him about the consequences. that the nation he had built up so strongly would fall apart. And I read that and I kind of wonder, why would his prayer then even be in the Bible? I think that's not a bad question to ask, and yet it is in there. It wasn't removed. And I suppose that gives me some help in trying to answer that niggling question I asked at the start. What do we do with the books and the sermons and the advice from leaders who have fallen? There was a very personal side to this that I'll not go into that gave rise to it, but I did some searching to see how different people were answering that question.

11:11 And one thing's for sure, none of us can say that we have all the right answers, and some really good people disagree with each other on how we should react. So As I thought about it, I looked at what some other people said. Here's what I found helpful from their advice. And please hear me. This isn't Stephen's truth. I can't stand over this. I'm just sharing things that I found helpful to consider as I wrestled with it. First one is this.

11:36 A leader's fall does not negate any truth that they taught. Truth is truth. God's truth is truth. Their fall may rule them out of holding a similar position again, but it doesn't change the truth. So secondly, we don't need to burn all of a person's books or sermons, but we may need to be careful about what part of their work we highlight. And obviously if a person who has fallen is repentant, That plays a big part in how we should react. And remember this as we do. We all approach things with our own bias, whether we care to admit it or not.

12:22 And I'll bet that we find it easier to say we should totally disregard the writings of someone we didn't agree with anyway, whilst we find mitigating factors for our own heroes or the people that we like. I'll never forget this. There but for the grace of God go I. All of us are susceptible to sin and we all carry our own maybe less public failures. We carry them with us every day. And maybe most importantly, remember this. If we were to rule out the work of those who have made huge mistakes, we would have to gut the Bible. Solomon's only the tip of the iceberg. I came across this great quote from Tim Challis.

13:11 Think about a Bible that excised every word spoken or written by an adulterer. We would have to remove every word spoken by Abraham and Jacob just to start. Then we'd have to get rid of most of the Psalms and Proverbs. And of course, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes would have to go as well. If we expanded from adultery to other serious sins, We'd have to remove Isaac because of his repeated deceptions, Peter because of his denial of Jesus, Jonah because of his disobedience to God's revealed will, and Samuel because of his protection of his wayward sons. Soon, we'd have almost no Bible left. Here's what we can say for sure. Somehow or other, in God's grace and greatness, he still uses the lives and words of those who have made great mistakes.

14:05 I don't pretend to know how or why he does it, but I know he uses people like you and people like me. And we need to think about that before we get too critical or too dismissive of others who have made big mistakes. And yeah, I know we'd all love to have really clear-cut black-and-white answers to some of these tricky questions, but we don't. because we're a bit messy. And we live in the mess because we're fallen. And I'm just thankful that God appears to be much more able to deal with the mess than we are. And God's truth is not negated by our failures. And indeed, as we move to consider something of how Solomon prayed and what it teaches us about God, here's why it's relevant to these issues.

15:01 And if I was to sum up what stands out most for me about this prayer, it's this: God is very great, and His greatness is seen best in His faithfulness and forgiveness. Solomon was really clear in his prayer about how great and unique his God was. There is no God like you. And he knew that although he had led the building of a spectacular temple, even that was only hinting at God's greatness. Will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot continue. How much less this temple I have built! So certainly at this point in his life, Solomon knew he served a unique God, a God who could not be compared to other non-gods of the peoples around, which makes it all the more perplexing as to how he ended up making altars to all kinds of deities.

16:10 At least in this prayer at this time, he realized that God, Yahweh, stood above all. And that's what I need in my God. When I look at the challenges of life around me, I don't want a God who may or may not show up, a God who may or may not care about what happens on the planet, a God who can't be trusted to be the same from one encounter to the next. And above all, I certainly don't want the God that's now being offered by so-called human wisdom. We used to be offered the God of reasoning, the God of rationality. We're now being offered the God of human thinking that is totally irrational. And supposedly it doesn't matter if our core principles totally contradict each other from one day to the next. It's a right mess out there.

17:08 And I need to know that I have a God I can trust, not just to deal with it, but a God who will reveal to me what is good and true, and a God who will act in His timing. And this prayer reveals that Solomon knew that, at least then. And the prayer also reveals that Solomon knew what the first correct response is to a God who is so great. Will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heavens cannot continue. How much less this temple I have built. Yet give attention to your servant's prayer and his plea for mercy, Lord my God. When we're confronted with a God so great and so perfect, a God who is so totally other, the Bible word for it is holy.

18:17 Our first posture has to be one of humility and a request for mercy. And yes, it's true, and the Bible reminds us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. But When we're stood against the God of glory, our flaws just stand out. Jamie unpacked this so helpfully a couple of weeks ago. The words that he taught us about, transgressions, iniquity, sin and evil, all part of us. And just as David started his prayer back then in Psalms 51, So Solomon has learned to follow that the first thing I have to say is, Have mercy on me, Lord. You know, it's probably our greatest mistake as humans. We're so conditioned to think of ourselves so highly, we're so carried away with our cleverness, and we don't want to confront the truth that before the holiness of God we have nothing.

19:28 And we totally need his mercy. He should wipe us away from his presence. And yet he doesn't. And he invites us to ask for mercy. You see, that's true greatness. In fact, when God was asked once by Moses, Moses said, I want you to show me your glory, God. Here's what happened. Moses said, Now show me your glory.

19:57 And the Lord said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. When God is asked to reveal his glory, he says he'd rather his glory be seen in his mercy, as opposed to his majesty. This is an incredible truth. In fact, it's foundational to Christianity, that because of who we are and our fallenness, we need a God of mercy. And we find that that's what we have. And in fact, in Solomon's prayer, we go on to find that fleshed out in a number of petitions, because Solomon, as he prays, is envisaging a series of situations all marked by the failure of the people to follow God faithfully. And each time there's a similar request.

21:01 Listen. When you hear, forgive. When they have sinned and turned back to you, hear from heaven and forgive. Because your people have sinned against you, hear from heaven and forgive. Being aware of the afflictions of their own hands, forgive. When they sin against you and if they turn back to you with all their heart, forgive your people. Forgive all the offenses they have committed against you. Do you see how many times?

21:38 Six times in the middle of the prayer Solomon calls on God to hear a cry of repentance and forgive And he prays with such confidence that God will answer that prayer. And why does he do that? Well, the answer to that is earlier in the prayer, Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you. You who keep your covenant of love, you have kept your promise, you have promised, and with your hand you have fulfilled it. We could spend all day unpacking that, but we can't. So just remember the basic truths. God is holy. And we are so prone to break his law, to fall short, to go our own way.

22:24 And when we do, we need to own it. And that's often the hardest part. We'd far rather ignore it or excuse it or explain it away, or even in our pride say that God has got it wrong or, well, God didn't really mean that. But like we saw with David 2 weeks ago, We got to own it straight up. We have to decide that we were wrong and we come seeking mercy. And the gospel truth is that when we do, God is always faithful. His promise of mercy for the penitent can be trusted because He keeps all of His promises. And at the heart of the gospel, is the truth that a holy God decided to take the punishment for our sin and failure on Himself, with the promise that those who repent and receive His free offer of forgiveness will have all of their sins forgiven, all of the time.

23:28 And in fact, God goes so far as to stake His own character and reputation on that promise. These words were read earlier. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. And there's something I find really interesting in that statement. See, if I was to ask you, why does God forgive us? I suspect we'd say something, well, God forgives us because he loves us. Well, he does, but this tells us that it's way more than that. God forgives us because he is just.

24:05 He forgives us out of His sense of what is right. And here's how I understand that. God has promised that those who confess their sins will be forgiven, and God's justice means that He can't break His promise. That's pretty significant, in my opinion, that even though I do stuff that is so badly wrong, God has promised, God has staked His whole character, His justice on His willingness to forgive me. And how badly I need that. And so do you. And Solomon had it nailed. And yet it would appear that he ended his life not taking up the offer because he refused to own his sin.

24:59 So that brings me back to where we started. And that niggling question. about what to do about those leaders, especially who have failed. Well, in response to that question, first of all, I need to remember my own sin and my need of forgiveness and let any answer I might start to have to the question, first of all, go through that filter. And then from there, I guess I should be praying that even when they have failed so badly and let us down, that they too will own their sin and seek the forgiveness that God promises to all of us. And if they do, and if God has promised them grace and mercy, then even if there have to be practical consequences as regards their public position, I need to be much quicker to react with the same grace and mercy, however let down I may feel. May God have mercy on them, and may God have mercy on me, because I'm a sinner. Can we pray?

26:24 And as we pray, I want us to consider what we've been introduced to the last three weeks especially, maybe if you've watched it online or been here, because we've had three prayers and all of them have had forgiveness as a key element, which is no surprise. And I just think we should reflect on it because the issue of forgiveness hits all of us somewhere. Some of us are maybe sitting here today and we're just drowned by the realization of our own sin and we think we've messed up too often and that God wouldn't want to hear from us anymore. Not at all. God promises forgiveness. He staked his reputation on it. Maybe some of us, actually we don't want to confront the truth of our sin and our need of forgiveness. Maybe it's because we think, well, compared to other people, we're not too bad, but we don't get to compare ourselves to other people.

27:28 We got to compare ourselves with the holiness of God and realize that we need forgiveness. And then maybe some of us are struggling to forgive those who have hurt us or those who have let us down. That's one of the hardest ones of all. This is not easy. But you know what? The cruel murder of Jesus Christ tells me that forgiveness comes at a cost. that it's not easy. But it also points out to me how serious sin is.

28:07 And yet it also reminds me that God will go to any length to forgive me. Lord God of glory, holy God, there is no God like you. But Lord, thank you that today the greatest thing about you that you want us to know is that you're a God of mercy and compassion. Lord, I thank you that you have forgiven me and you forgive me day in, day out when I make such a mess. Help us, Lord, to just embrace what you offer us. Help us to understand again the depth of your love, but also the reality of your justice that keeps your promise to forgive. And Lord, as we embrace that forgiveness for ourselves, help us to be better at being channels of it to others, even when they've let us down, even though it's difficult. And we ask you that in the name of our crucified and risen Savior, Jesus Christ.

29:26 Amen

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About this talk

This talk explores Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem, highlighting the dramatic context and the profound themes of God's greatness, faithfulness, and mercy. It addresses the difficult issue of how to respond to Christian leaders who have fallen into sin, using Solomon's own life as an example of failure despite his public devotion. The speaker emphasises the importance of recognising God's holiness, the need for repentance, and the assurance of forgiveness promised by God. The talk concludes with a call to embrace God's mercy personally and to extend forgiveness to others, even when it is challenging.

Bible passages

1 Kings 8 (main passage)
1 Kings 11:1–10

Topics