Perpetually in the Temple...2 Chronicles 7:12–20

12 Then the LORD appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him: “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, 14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. 16 For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. 17 As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, and do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, 18 then I will establish the throne of your kingdom, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man as ruler in Israel.’

19 “But if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods, and worship them, 20 then I will uproot them from My land which I have given them; and this house which I have sanctified for My name I will cast out of My sight, and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

     The dedication of the temple and the events surrounding the dedication of the temple are finished with chapter 7 verse 11 and Solomon successfully accomplishes, we're told in verse 11, "all that came into his heart to make in the house of the Lord and in his own house..." that which would honor the Lord.
     When we arrive at verse 12, it is entirely possible that months and even years have passed. We are not certain, because the text does not tell us how much time, but it is certain that some significant period of time has gone by. The Lord appears to Solomon again by night and he says to him "I have heard your prayer" and He assures him that he has chosen this place, meaning the Temple, as a home for Himself and as a place of sacrifice.
     This in itself is very significant. When God says he has chosen it as a "place for myself", he is saying that he will "live" there. We need to ask ourselves what that means. Surely the God who created the world, who is transcendent, who is bigger than all that there is, cannot live in a place that man has created. Certainly then we are to understand this in a metaphorical sense. Our Lord is saying that he will be with the Israelites in sense in which he is not with any other nation.
     This is born out by the second part of what God says when He says that He has chosen this as a "house of sacrifice". If the Scripture is clear about anything, it is clear about the fact that men are sinful and that, in order to approach Him there must be a shedding of blood to atone for that sin. "Without the shedding of blood, there can be remission of sins.." Is the message of the entire Bible.
     What is truly interesting here is that down in verse 16 and 17 He says that He has chosen and sanctified this house and that His Name will be there "forever". He says at the at the end of verse 16 "my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually." Verse 17 and following are filled with the conditional language that we are used to hearing in the law... If you do this, then I will bless; but if you do that then I will judge.
     The problem here, as in many other places in the Old Testament, is that God, from the very beginning had prophesied that Israel would not be faithful! He had said, from before Israel ever set foot in the land that they would be rebellious and that He would be forced to judge and drive them away. And so we are left with trying to think our way through what ever does He mean when He says that He will be perpetually present with them in the temple?
     It can't be a reference to his presence in the Solomonic temple, because the Solomonic temple doesn't exist any longer. It really can't be a reference to the temple at all actually, because that entire system doesn't exist any longer. The Scripture says that that entire system has been supplanted by means of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus. Ah! there we have it!
     What we have here is another of the instances in the Old Testament where God was speaking not only in a local sense, but more directly in the larger sense of referring to the Lord Jesus as He is the fulfillment all of what the Old Testament pointed to. The temple, and all that was in it was a picture of the Lord Jesus, His body, His blood, His work, and all of the satisfaction that that would provide to God concerning the sins and offenses of Gods people.
     What God received in token on the altars in the Tabernacle, and the Temple and "winked" during the Old Testament period under the Law; He received in reality when Christ laid down his life on Calvary's cross. When that real sacrifice was finished and received in the true sanctuary in God's heaven, there was no longer in need for the earthly temple. When Christ entered in to that real Temple and provided that satisfactory Atonement to his Heavenly Father; all need for the type that had been going on in the Old Testament era was at an end.
     Though it is surely true that Solomon could not know the fullness of what God was saying to him, this was how God could say, truthfully, that He would be perpetually with the Temple. This was how He could say that He would be perpetually with Israel and how He could be forever present with his people. Because his presence would be with His messiah, the One coming, the Lord Jesus Christ.