TESTED STONES

                                        
Strength! Very evident in Solomon’s building, the element of strength: those mighty stones, those weighty stones and those great cedars of Lebanon. It is all the impression of strength.

It’s taken a long time to secure those stones, they have a long history, indeed it might be impossible to trace the beginning of those stones. That rock-like substance goes back a long way and has a long history. Those cedars of Lebanon were not planted yesterday, they speak of many a testing storm, many a long year of growth.

There’s nothing superficial about these things, nothing light and fancy about them, nothing will be able to carry them away; they’ll stand, they’ll endure. They are the embodiment of the very principle of patient endurance. There's eternity in their very constitution.

They have passed through many a tempestuous testing; they are here in the House because of that. The King will dwell there because of that. They have been exposed to the elements, they have never been coddled and covered and protected from adverse elements; they’ve been exposed to all the forces that could destroy. 

Here we have strength. 

~T. Austin Sparks~