Charles Spurgeon Commentary 1 Chronicles 22

Then David said, This is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.

Now he knew where the temple was to be built; and certainly he had discovered that long-predestined site of which God said, Here will I dwell. This was the very hill where Abraham offered up his son Isaac; a hill, therefore, most sacred by covenant to the living God. He delighted to remember the believing obedience of his servant Abraham, and there he would have his temple built.

The place where God had answered him, where the angel had appeared to him, where the fire had come down from heaven, he felt to be holiest, and that the Lord had directed him to it as the spot where his temple was to be built.

It is very significant that it should be upon a threshing-floor, for surely the Church of God is God's threshing-floor, where he gathers his sheaves together and separates the wheat from the chaff. "I will winnow," he says, "my threshing-floor."

Oh! that we might always recognize that Christ is the temple of God, and Christ is the sacrifice; Christ is the appearance of God that is better to us than the appearance of angels, and Christ is God's answer to us by fire, and where Christ is, there is the burnt-offering.

And David commanded to gather together the strangers that were in the land of Israel; and he set masons to hew wrought stones to build the house of God.

It is very observable that not the Israelites, but the foreigners, the aliens, the strangers, the remaining Canaanites that were in the land, were set to hew the stones for the house of the Lord. I have heard very good people indeed object to the ungodly giving any money whatever to God's cause. This is all against it; here are the aliens employed to hew the stones for the house of God, and why should they not? It will do them good, at least, to do some good thing or other in their lives. Let them have an opportunity to do so.

But I see here an indication of the calling of the Gentiles, for whenever the Jews said the Gentiles had nothing to do with God, why, the very stones of their temple spoke against them. Were not the timbers brought from Tyre by the Tyrians on rafts? Were not the stones quarried by aliens and foreigners? Oh! the Lord would have his people follow a large, and liberal, and prophetic policy in their dealing with mankind. God forbid that we should shut anybody out from anything that looks like good. Oh! let us not repel them; it may be that in repelling their offerings we may be hardening their hearts.

David was a wiser man than that.

Then David said, This is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.

From that moment, this place was set apart as the site of the future temple, and the center of the hopes of the people of God, and, dear friend, what better site could have been selected than the spot where the angel sheathed his sword, where prayer was heard, and where sacrifice was accepted? And now, today, you and I have only one temple, and that temple is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Well-beloved, for in him the sword is sheathed, in him the sacrifice is accepted, and in him intercession still prevails.

And David commanded to gather together the strangers that were in the land of Israel and he set masons to hew wrought stones to build the house of God. And David prepared iron in abundance for the nails for the doors of the gates, and for the joinings and brass in abundance without weight; also cedar trees in abundance: for the Zidonians and they of Tyre brought much cedar wood to David.

See, a great deliverance brings a great offering. Because God has commanded the angel sheath his sword, there is to be a temple commenced, and David is busy preparing for it. O you who have been saved from death and hell, what can you render to God for all his benefits toward you?