1 Kings 8:62-66
"62 Then the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice before the Lord.63 Solomon offered as peace offerings to the Lord 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the people of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord. 64 The same day the king consecrated the middle of the court that was before the house of the Lord, for there he offered the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat pieces of the peace offerings, because the bronze altar that was before the Lord was too small to receive the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat pieces of the peace offerings.
65 So Solomon held the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great assembly, from Lebo-hamath to the Brook of Egypt, before the Lord our God, seven days. 66 On the eighth day he sent the people away, and they blessed the king and went to their homes joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the Lord had shown to David his servant and to Israel his people."
There is a very important spiritual lesson imbedded in the last verses of this chapter which records the sacrifices made by the king on the days of dedication. We quote from notes on the passage by the Rev. W. Still, Gilcomston South Church, Aberdeen to whom we are indebted for this insight: 'it is significant that there were no trespass or sin offerings. In the high moments of Christian experience our thoughts must not be upon our own unworthiness but upon Christ's worthiness. It is a Satan-inspired 'humility' that desires to bemoan its sins (its motive being display of superior humility), whereas true worship and true humility are lost in joyous contemplation of the glories of the worthy Lamb. ' It is to this that the unaffected rejoicings of Solomon and his people bear witness, and it is a salutary reminder to morbidly minded believers that constant pre-occupation with their sins and unworthiness is not necessarily a sign of grace. It is to be feared that some of the devotional literature of the past has been responsible for the development of this unhealthy attitude. We would be the last to decry the writings of men of bygone days who walked with God how much indeed we have learned from them and how much they have to teach us today - but in the devotional life of some Christians they seem to have displaced even the Bible, or have been allowed to distort the sane and healthy attitude of the Scriptures by an overlay of morbidity. This has had the effect of making them unnatural and stilted in manner and, even worse, sometimes a little inhuman. How much better and safer to allow our lives to be shaped by the robust and natural spirituality of the Bible!