God and His Dwelling Place

Good afternoon, everyone! Hope everyone's doing well this Sabbath day. It's nice to have a little bit warmer weather. Just a little bit, right? That wasn't meant as a joke, really.

But it is good to be with all of you here today, and always good to enjoy the Sabbath together.

And you noticed, probably in the bulletin, that our theme for the Deuteronomy 6 instruction for this month again has to do with who and what God is. So I wanted to talk a little bit, in general at least, to that theme. I think when we read the Bible, to me, one of the things that we have as a blessing in terms of how we understand the Bible and God is seeing a continuity that exists between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

So Mark Scapura read the Scripture earlier today in Hebrews. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And as we know, one of the things that we see is a mind of God that's brought out in the Bible, whether it's things that happen in the Old Testament, the way that God dealt with people in that time, all the way through to how He deals with us today, and how we'll deal with mankind and His sons and daughters in the future.

And so today I'd like to talk about one of those themes, because I think whenever we see those themes that work their way through the Bible, we need to give special attention to them.

We need to think about what they mean. We need to think about why they're in the Bible, because they tell us some very specific things about the mind of God, how He thinks, and how we should think as we continue to encourage and develop His mind within us. Our slides are live.

I don't know how the lighting is here. Hopefully people can see them. I'm always afraid to turn down the lighting during church, because you never know when people might nod off, right?

So one of the things that we gain a lot of identity from is where we live. So if you look at this picture, you, I'm sure, are already forming opinions in your mind about the people who would live in a house like this. Let's go to the next slide. Likewise, as soon as we see a picture like this and a different type of dwelling structures, probably a different part of the world, again, we're probably forming impressions immediately when we see a house in terms of who lives in it, what they're like, what characteristics they have, and we'll go one more slide.

My daughter, of course, is always advocating that I try to use the flintstones when I speak.

So this one's for you, Madeline. But we can tell we can advance one more slide.

And that's how it looks in the dark, because they are in the stone age for the flintstones, you know. We can go back one, go for a blank slide for a few minutes. So the point being that as we see the places that people live, we draw immediate conclusions, don't we? We think about things and we can sort of know certain things, at least stereotypically, about people in terms of where they live. What about God? And what does dwelling and living have to do with God? And that's the theme, sort of similar to what we heard in the sermonette today about moving and different places to live. What I'd like to focus on today is God and His dwelling place. Because actually, as we go through the Bible, as we're going to see today, there's a very interesting set of progressions, and it's fascinating to see where God has chosen to dwell and some of the characteristics of the places He's chosen to dwell. And like I said earlier, it's a theme that really works its way all the way through the Bible, and as a result, one that we need to give some attention to.

Now, we know, of course, that traditional Western Christianity looks towards heaven as the ultimate goal and as the place where people will go to dwell with God. But, as I think all of us know, when we look in the pages of the Bible, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to find any persuasive scriptures that would tell us that we're going to go live with God in heaven. And, in fact, as a contrast to that, as we'll see today, the Bible is full from beginning to end, talking about how God desires to dwell with mankind. Now, that might seem odd at first, and maybe we don't think about it that often, but as we're going to see today, the Bible is literally full of those scriptures, and it's hard not to find them as you start to look through the things going on in the Bible. So, let's talk about this theme and go through it then and see a progression and a bit of a history about God dwelling with mankind and what it means for us.

Let's start with the Garden of Eden. I think this is an obvious place, and we'll start in Genesis 3.

Now, we know, of course, that God created the Garden of Eden, and as he created the heavens and the earth and everything physical that we see around us, in the end he placed man and woman in the garden. And then, of course, he created the two trees, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they were told, and the tree of life, and they were told not to eat of the tree of life, but of course, as we know, they did.

And what happened after that? Genesis 3, and we'll read verses 8 through 10. Genesis 3 verses 8 through 10, talking here about Adam and Eve and what it was like for them. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And then the Lord God called to Adam and said, Where are you? And he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.

Now, we've read this passage a lot, and it's pretty familiar, but a few things I'd like to focus on. The first thing is that we don't see anything unusual or surprising about God walking through the garden. So, if we read this passage, there's nothing in here that would make you say that it was strange to Adam and Eve, that somehow, suddenly, God would be there walking in the garden.

In fact, as you kind of get the feel of this passage, and as I was reading in some different sources around it, many of them would say that it was customary, would be what we would infer, that God was walking in the garden and would come there, perhaps even on a daily basis, to spend time with Adam and Eve. We know from earlier in the passage in Genesis that they were told to do certain things, right?

They were told to dress the garden and keep it, which is a pretty general set of instructions, and I believe, at least, that there were a lot more specifics that probably went along with that, in terms of how to take care of the plants that were there, how to deal with the animals. We know that they named all of the animals from what we see in the passage there, and so I think we can very strongly infer, not only from this passage, but from what we read in the preceding chapters, that it was rather customary that God was there.

And as you sort of take in the setting, so if any of you have either been to the Middle East or know the area, you know it's very hot there. And so when it talks about God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, typically this is going to be a time that's going to be in the late afternoon or the evening.

So sun starts going down. You know, we see a lot written in the Bible about living under a vine in a fig tree, and that's talked about as sort of a sign of prosperity. But one of the things, too, that's very common in the Middle East, and the reason that people would live under vines and fig trees is they have a lot of leaves.

How many have seen a fig tree before? So fig trees have these big sort of leaves with clumps, kind of like people who put a bunch of fingers together in clumps, and they cast a big shadow. And when you go to that part of the world as well, something that people commonly do is they'll build like a rooftop garden or a gazebo, but they won't put a roof on it.

They'll put a wooden frame up, and then they'll plant grape leaves, grape vines. And over time those grape vines grow up, and they grow over, and they provide shade for the cool of the day. So you can kind of feel a setting here where Adam's gone out, he's worked a hard day, he's been working, doing the things that he needs to do in the garden, and he comes into the cool of the garden and the cool time of the evening to spend time with God, time that he would have spent their dwelling with them.

And it was at that point then, of course, that he confronted them and asked them, and in fact they hid themselves when they saw him coming.

And so you get this feel of the fact that they were expecting him to be there, otherwise they would have asked who in the world it was walking through the garden, and they hid themselves from him. Let's turn to a later passage in Genesis 3, and we'll read verses 23 and 24. This is where we see the conclusion of this part of the story.

Therefore, in verse 23, the Lord God sent Adam out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man, and he placed caribim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. So we can go to the next slide, please. It's interesting to understand some of the symbolism that's here. So Mark Graham gave a very fascinating sermon a couple of weeks ago that I have to say I still think about just about every day. And he talked a lot about the glory that came with God, the fire, the cloud, and some very interesting thoughts about what that signified. And we see that here in this passage as well, don't we? So when they were locked out of the garden of Eden, there were caribim, there was a sword, and there was fire. Now these things are all indicators of God's presence. So what we have here is a representation of the Ark of the Covenant. And there are a lot of different artistic renditions of what it might have looked like, but what we know definitely is it had caribim on it. And why is that? Because they're associated with the presence of God or the throne of God or a place that God is.

Okay, and the Ark of the Covenant, as we know, was a symbolic place within the tabernacle at first, and later within the more permanent temple where God lived in the Holy Apollis, symbolically with Israel. And as we'll see later, those same signs and some of those same passages that Mr. Graham read a few weeks ago, we had the cloud and the fire that were there showing his presence. So outside of the Garden of Eden, it wasn't enough to lock them out. There was a sign set up there with caribim, with flames, and with a sword to signify that this was a place where God was still dwelling.

It was interesting that he still had that habitation of some sort on earth with mankind.

And it's a question we can talk about. I'm not really sure of the answer for it, but why did God not simply destroy the Garden of Eden? Why didn't he put a moat around it, crocodiles, make it impossible to get across into there? For some reason, he decided the garden would stay. Over time, it ended up dying, I would assume, of neglect and changing from the form that it was in, similar to what we heard in the sermonette as well. As those decisions are made, as you move out of a place like a garden, it overgrows, and it becomes very different because of neglect. But God chose to leave those caribim there and the sword. So a few things that I think we're going to see somewhat similar as we walk through some more of these scriptures, then, is the glory of God, his presence there, God walking with mankind, and God wanting to dwell with them.

Let's look at the next set of examples, then, and we'll talk about ancient Israel.

We can flip to the next slide as well. And we'll turn to Exodus 29. So we know that over time, then, man's society grew up. We know the times of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The patriarchs came, the Israelites became a mighty nation, lived in Egypt through the influence of Joseph, had a very large presence there, and the kindness the Pharaoh showed to them, and then eventually they fell into slavery. And then God rescued the nation of Israel and took them out into the wilderness out of Egypt.

And so if we look then at Exodus 29, we'll start in verse 42, and we're skipping into a section where God talks with them about setting up a tabernacle. So what is a tabernacle? It's hard for me to see from the side, but you can see here. The tabernacle was really, when you read the detailed accounts of it, was a tent. It was really an elaborate tent. There were some very nice things, skins of animals that were used, gold and so forth, but it was, in the end, a tent that was set up in the middle of the encampment. And you can see the tents around it. There's some very detailed instructions in the Old Testament about where each of the tribes of Israel was to pitch their camp within this large encampment. And in the middle was the tabernacle. Let's read verse 42 of Exodus 29.

Here, specifically talking about offerings to be offered there, this shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generation at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet you and I will speak with you. Again, a very personal thing of God living there and dwelling there. There I will meet with the children of Israel and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory. So I will consecrate the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. I will consecrate both Aaron and his sons to minister to me as priests. I will dwell among the children of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I'm the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them. I am the Lord their God. Now, there's a word in Hebrew to dwell, which is the word shakah. And some of you might have heard this term before, but there's something called the glory that lived at the temple. This pillar of fire, the smoke, the glow that was there is referred to generally as the shekinah glory. And it comes from that word shakah, which means to dwell. Because this glory, this glow that was there, showing and signifying that God was dwelling with, God was tangibly living with, the children of Israel. If we go to the next slide, this is more of a close-up of what the temple itself or the tabernacle building within that compound would have looked like. In the very back end is the Holy of Holies, where you see a representation of the Ark of the Covenant set up. And there was a large curtain that you can just see a cut off of, a large curtain that blocked off that part of the tabernacle. So as we read in other places, separation through that veil of the temple was there to stop people from entering in an unauthorized way. In fact, the high priest was only allowed in there once a year. Numbers 16, verse 42 is one place if you wanted to turn to that and look at it. There's also reference made in the book of Hebrews when it talks about the Day of Atonement to the fact that the high priest would only enter into that Holy of Holies once a year after doing a whole set of ritual cleansings to be clean in moving into that area. So even though God was dwelling with Israel, there were some symbolical barriers there, like in this case the veil that was in the tabernacle. Let's go to Exodus 40, and we'll read verses 34 through 38, talking more about this Shekinah glory, this glory of God that was there filling the tabernacle of meeting.

Exodus 40, verses 34 through 38. Then the cloud, it says here, covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. So you can just imagine being there in the camp of Israel and seeing this entire cloud and brightness coming in there. And Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting because the cloud rested above it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, the children of Israel would go onward in all their journeys. But if the cloud was not taken up, they did not journey till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was above the tabernacle by day, and fire was over it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all of their journeys. So here again, when it talks about resting the glory of the Lord being there and being on the tabernacle, it's using that same Hebrew word that we talked about earlier, the word sheka, and it's shekinah glory. Again, the fact that God was resting there and God was present there.

And it's interesting also, we think, again, back to the original passages we read about the Garden of Eden. What else was there? God being there present with the people. They followed the cloud. They walked with God. When God picked up and decided it was time to move on, they walked on.

They moved on together. And likewise, as we saw on the depiction of the Ark of the Covenant, the carabin were there, the same symbol of the carabin, and symbolically the temple or the throne place of God. Let's move on to Leviticus 26.

We'll read this one out of the new international version. Leviticus 26, verses 11 and 12.

Again, God stating his intent towards the children of Israel.

Remember, we're talking here about a common theme that we're seeing weaving its way through the Bible in terms of God's desire to dwell with mankind. Leviticus 26, verse 11. Here, he says, For those of you who ever wonder if God has a sense of humor or real the grittiness of life, Deuteronomy 23, 12-14, I always find this kind of funny.

New international version, verse 12, says, Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself.

As part of your equipment, have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. And why is that? Verse 14, Because the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and deliver your enemies from to you. Your camp must be holy, so he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you. So he's basically saying, look guys, I'm walking through your camp and I don't want to step in something when I'm walking through the camp to watch over you. Now, many of you either have or had children living in the home or pets. So for those of you who have pets, we have four cats. And every once in a while when it's dark, I don't turn the light on usually when I get up during the night or when I wake up in the morning. I'll take a few steps out of my bed and sometimes there's something soft squishing between my toes. That's what God is saying right here in Deuteronomy.

I don't want to walk through your camp and have something soft squishing between my toes. How many of you who have kids have stepped on a Lego in the middle of the carpet or a dupe-lo? And you can probably remember if you've done it how much pain that can give you right in the arch of your foot, those edges of a Lego, right? So God is saying the same thing, though. God is saying, look, I'm walking among you. I'm living with you. Okay? Show some respect. Have a camp that I can walk through so I can be with you and protect you and fulfill these things. So he's being very real about this and the fact that he's there in their dwelling as a part of their home, being a very personal part of what they're doing and the way that they're living every day of their lives. Now after this, there's a bit of a pause point. As I was going through putting the notes together for this sermon, I didn't, I ran out of time, honestly, but was trying to figure out when was it that the this glory, this cloud, stopped being there above the tabernacle? As far as I could tell, it's not indicated definitely in the Bible. And the closest I could tell was that the last accounts of it were right before Israel crossed the Jordan. So as they crossed the Jordan, the Jordan River was like the gateway to the Promised Land. As they crossed that river, they were entering the land. And that's the last place that I could find, at least, as a record of them following the pillar of fire or the cloud.

And so for whatever reason, after that point in time, it would appear that it was not there with them, and they began to settle down in the Promised Land, and they set up their places. Now God, of course, originally we had the tabernacle. That was the center of the meeting place for the Israelites.

After that, you can read in Joshua 8, the Ark of the Covenant was set down in a valley between two towns called Ebal and Gerizim, and they were actually mountaintops. Now, you know, mountains, maybe not by our standards, if you've lived in a place like Colorado or seen the Rocky Mountains, but large hills. And in the valley between them, the Ark of the Covenant was placed. And this was unique in terms of history because it was not set up inside the Temple and inside the Holy of Holies.

It was set outside there as part of an altar. And again, there's no record that I could find what was written in the Bible of anything like the glory of God sitting there in the way that it did for the children of Israel. Later, if we look in Joshua 18, you can see, and you probably remember this account, that the Ark is then moved to Shiloh. And there's more of a tabernacle set up there in Shiloh. But again, there's no indication there of the glory or the fire or the glow or anything of that sort being there. So still, symbolically, God was living with Israel, but it wasn't that special sort of relationship that we saw with the children of Israel as they were moving towards the promised land. And of course, we remember then, Samuel as a child is called by God, lives with Eli. They are there at Shiloh. A lot of problems with the sons of Eli. Samuel takes over as priest. And then the Philistines come in during that time period, that era, and actually take the Ark of the Covenant.

And so the Ark of the Covenant goes into the captivity of the Philistines, and it sits there for probably a hundred, maybe even a couple of hundred years, until David finally gets the Ark of the Covenant back. And then we know that the whole difficulty with David being a man of war was not fit to build a temple for God, but he designed a temple. And the Ark was kept in a special place until that temple was ready. So let's go to the next slide, and let's turn to 1 Kings 8. And Mark Graham read this passage, or at least parts of it a couple weeks ago. We'll turn to it again and just look at it a little bit from a slightly different angle in terms of God's dwelling with Israel. Because just think of this time period now. We had a temple that's built hundreds of years after the children of Israel had entered the Promised Land. And what happened here? 1 Kings 8, and we'll read the first 13 verses or so. And this is when the temple was finished.

Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the chief fathers and children of Israel, to King Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from the city of David, which is Zion. And therefore all the men of Israel assembled with King Solomon at the feast in the month of Ethanim, which is the seventh month. So all the children of Israel, all the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the Ark. Then they brought up the Ark of the Lord, the tabernacle of meeting, and all the holy furnishings that were in the tabernacle. So they took all of the accoutrements that were there inside of the old temporary tent or tabernacle and brought it up then to the permanent temple. And King Solomon in verse 5, And all the congregation of Israel who were assembled with him were with him before the ark, sacrificing sheep and oxen that could not be counted or numbered for multitude. And then the priests brought in the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to its place, into the inner sanctuary of the temple, to the most holy place, under the wings of the caribim. So again we see the Ark and the wings of the caribim being talked about. For the caribim spread their two wings over the place of the Ark, and the caribim overshadowed the Ark and its poles. So what it tells us, and when I was looking on the internet for different depictions, we can go to the next picture as well, there were a number of depictions of very large caribim, almost looked like Assyrian winged lions, that those depictions show in the Holy of Holies. And this scripture is also describing something more than just the caribim that we saw with their wings over the Ark, and talking about that within the Holy of Holies there were much larger caribim. And here we see in verse 7 they talk about them overshadowing the Ark. So they must have been quite large in size. The poles extended so that the ends of the poles could be seen from the holy place in front of the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from the outside. So the inner sanctuary would have, of course, been within that building. Outside would have been some places where you could do ceremonial washing and other preparations before going into the temple. Nothing was in the Ark except the two tablets of stone which Moses put there at Horeb when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel and they came out of the land of Egypt.

And verse 10 is what I want to focus on, though. It came to pass when the priest came out of the holy place that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so the priest could not continue ministering because of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. And then Solomon spoke in verse 12, and what did he say? The Lord said he would dwell in the dark cloud, I've surely built you an exalted house and a place for you to dwell in forever. So we see some of the main themes again coming through, don't we? The carabin, not only on the Ark of the Covenant, but within the Holy of Holies. And God dwelling through that glory, that Shekana glory. Imagine what it must have been like to be there. You know, first of all, just this magnificent building, especially for that time period. People would estimate this happened in about 900 to 1000 BC.

So, you know, many, not a very advanced civilization in terms of technology and everything you could build. So building this size would be quite significant at that time. But not only that, but then thinking about seeing this glory, first of all, just the miraculous element of these clouds coming in, but then symbolically knowing what it was. Because one thing you can bet is the Israelites knew the stories that were passed on to them and written down as well about the things that happened back in the old days as they were coming out of Egypt and this glory that was over the tabernacle.

So this was a very tangible way that God was showing at the time of Solomon when this temple was built that He was living there. He was dwelling with Israel. And as far as we understand, for the next 400 years as that temple stood, but until it was destroyed by the Babylonians, it would appear that that glory of God was there, dwelling there. There's no indication to make you believe that it went away. And in fact, if we read in Ezekiel, we don't have to turn there, but a few passages in Ezekiel, Ezekiel has visions of what's going to happen to Israel at the time that they're taken over. In Ezekiel 9 it says, the glory of the God of Israel has gone up from the carob where it has been and to the threshold of the temple.

And then almost progressively talking in Ezekiel 10, he says, the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple and stood over the carob him. And the carob lifted their wings, mounted up from the earth in my sight, and when they went out the wheels were beside them, and they stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord's house, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. So if we go back to one slide earlier, you can think a little bit more about what this is talking about, because the temple compound, the temple's not just one building, it's a compound with some sections to it.

What God is, or what Ezekiel's talking about here as he writes, is sort of this gradual retreat that God is making from the temple. In the first passage it talks about him coming out to the threshold of the temple, and then later it talks in the passage I just read about being out at the east gate of the Lord's house. And then finally, if we read in Ezekiel 11, if you want to turn to verses 22 through 25, we'll just read it briefly here, it says, the caribom lifted their wings, and with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was high above them, and the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood on the mountain, which is on the east side of the city, the Mount of Olives.

So we see this retreat continuing as he moves out of the temple and up to the mountain, and then the Spirit took me up and brought me in a vision by the Spirit of God to Chaldea to those in captivity, and the vision that I had seen went up from me, and so I spoke to those in captivity of all the things the Lord had shown me.

So we see this depiction of God removing his dwelling place then from the people of Israel, and then we have another pause point and hiatus. Let's go to John 1, because we all know, of course, in the end what happened was Jesus Christ came, and what did he do when he came to earth? This time a few of the things were missing, right? There was glory, there were the signs in the heavens when he was born, which is how the wise men knew that God had come, but other things were consistent.

He came to walk with mankind, and he came to dwell with them, and he dwelled for 33 and a half years as a man, and during his ministry very closely with his disciples. Let's turn to John 1, verses 14 through 16, continuing on this progression of God dwelling with men through the Bible. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and the word there dwell is a Greek word that means to dwell among or to tabernacle.

Okay, so again we see an allusion back to the way that he was dwelling, in this case, with ancient Israel, and we beheld his glory. I think this word and this terminology was probably chosen purposefully because of the history and what people there would have understood. The glory, as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John bore witness of him and cried out, saying, This is he of whom I said, he who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. In his fullness we've all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. So this time we don't have the separation either, do we? There's no veil. Now we know that the disciples who walked with Jesus Christ didn't understand everything he was saying. In fact, even immediately before his crucifixion, they still didn't understand what he meant when he was talking about his own death and resurrection.

But later, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, they would understand. And let's look at a very powerful related symbol, then, in Matthew 27. Matthew 27, verses 50 through 52.

This is the very end of Matthew's account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

In verse 50 we read, Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and he yielded up his spirit.

And then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the graves after his resurrection, they went into the Holy City and appeared to many. A lot of incredible miracles there, but I want to focus on the first one, the veil of the temple being torn from top to bottom. Because we remember, in the earlier passages, the priests could only go there once a year on behalf of the people to take their sins before God and have them forgiven. And now, when Jesus Christ died, we've reached the turning point in this journey, this progression that we see of God dwelling with man, who is the one who is mankind. And we've reached the turning point at the death of Jesus Christ with that veil that blocked the people as a whole from coming directly before God was torn in two. And we know, of course, that symbolizes then the ability for us to come directly to God through the Holy Spirit at will, not once a year, but as often as we can, as often as we want to. He's always there ready to listen to us and ready, symbolically, to commune with us or to walk with us, like he always wanted to do and did with Adam and Eve early on and with ancient Israel. And we won't turn there, but if we follow this progression on further, we think of the day of Pentecost. And what is it that happened on the day of Pentecost? Again, as Mr. Graham pointed out a couple weeks ago in the sermon, right?

The sound of the mighty rushing wind, the glory of God. And again, this time, it didn't go and rest on the Ark of the Covenant. It rested on individual Christians, people who were called by God, showing again, symbolically, in terms that they would understand very powerfully, having the history that they had, that now this flame of God, this glory of God was sitting on every individual head of the believers who were there, showing that God had now made his dwelling place with individual Christians, very consistent with the veil being torn, the fact that we can come directly before God. So as we read on then, the story continues, again consistently. And let's turn to Ephesians 2, and we'll read verses 19 through 22. Again, a dwelling place. And now we've seen through the day of Pentecost that the dwelling place of God has moved out of a building to be with men. Ephesians 2 verses 19 through 22. In verse 19, now therefore you're no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together grows to a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. And again, they would have understood these terms and these references to the temple and the glory of God and dwelling within the temple because of all of the things that happened within the history of Israel. And very clearly pointing out the fact that God had moved from the Garden of Eden to living through a tabernacle to living through a temple to living through his Son as flesh and blood on earth to living in us as individual Christians. Let's turn to the next chapter, Ephesians 3. We'll read verses 14 through 19.

Ephesians 3 verses 14 through 19. For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his Spirit and the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ that passes beyond knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. So again, the ultimate goal here, God dwelling with us.

So we've gone through a lot of things in progression, so if you're thinking you're probably saying, so what? Why is this important? What does it mean? I like this analogy here of the family, and I think maybe it's not one that we always think about, and let's talk about it in terms of dwelling, right? Because when we're family, we live together as a family, don't we?

There's really not a closer bond. We'll go a little deeper into that in a moment.

But we also see here that God says, he doesn't say, you're my employees. He doesn't say, I hired you for a purpose. He doesn't call us his slaves that are there just to do a job for him. He calls us his family. And there's a very different relationship there, isn't there? Because when you work for someone, there's a quid pro quo, right? You go in, they give you a wage, a job, maybe education, maybe training. You give them your labor. What happens at the end of the day? You part ways, right? You go home, you've done your labor, you've fulfilled your responsibility, you bundle that up, you compartmentalize it, you set it aside, and you go home to, quote unquote, your real life, right?

Because the reason we work is to support our families, to be able to make a living, to eat, and to survive in this world. But we typically, as employees, we set that aside and we come home to where we live. Very different thing where we live and where we work. I think that's what God is wanting to underscore in this section. If we think about some of the colloquialisms that we use in our language, I think it'll hit home, no pun intended. That's the point. We use terms like that, right? If something really hits home, it hits you at the core of your being, doesn't it?

That's why we use that term. We talk about things hitting us where we live. Athletes talk about having respect for my house when you're playing in their home field, right? Talk about the house being our castle. Dads, when they get frustrated, will say, you're living in my house, and as long as you're in my house, you live by my rules, right? Probably a few people here in this audience, I see a few smiling, who probably said that a couple of times. TV shows love to pick up on this theme, don't they, as well? Think about Big Brother. What does Big Brother deal with? Take a whole bunch of people from all kinds of crazy different backgrounds and throw them together in a single house. I actually haven't watched a whole episode, even, of the show, but I've seen enough ads to understand the general theme of it. I have from time to time watched Survivor, which I find a really interesting psychology lesson, but it's also the same thing. You take people from different backgrounds and you make them live in the same space, and you start to see the tensions that rise and just the little things that bother them about how things are going. Let's go forward a couple slides. Most of you know that our son has moved into college, and roommates tend to be a big thing, right? So when people move out of the house before they get married, often they'll live with roommates. I found countless numbers of websites on the internet complaining about roommate stories, and it's amazing. It strikes at how personal the way people live is to them. I'm going to read one of them. This story was written by a lady. She says, first, let me say, this was my first time sharing an apartment with another girl. I graduated from college last May after living in the dorms all four years. I took a good job with a major accounting firm in a city near the college I went to, and I had known Liz my last two years of college. We took a few courses together and hung out with the same group of friends. Liz got a job with the same firm a few days before me, told me she found a great apartment within walking distance of the office, and asked me if I wanted to share it with her. I said yes, and after the first couple days living with her, I totally regretted it. Now, that's a common story, isn't it, right? Because we know people, we might work with people, we might be friends with people and do things with them, but until you've really lived with them, you don't really understand everything that makes them tick, do you? It started with a rental contract. We went in together to sign it with the intention that she was going to sign. She read the contract, didn't like what it said about the cleaning deposit, and refused to sign. That would be called in literary terms a foreshadowing.

She pushed the contract across the table to me and said, you can sign it if you want to.

I thought, no big deal, and I signed. And then came move-in day. Liz decides she wants the front larger bedroom because she has so much stuff. So much stuff was an understatement. We spent all day moving her stuff in and didn't even begin to unpack my car. We got her bedroom, for the most part, set up. The next morning, she decides she doesn't like the fact that when the sun rises, it shines right in her bedroom window. So now she wants to move to the smaller back bedroom.

Fine. Finally, later that day, I finally got around to getting my stuff out of my car. The apartment was utter chaos for the first two weeks. Liz must have rearranged everything six or seven times. I couldn't find a thing. It was such a mess we ended up ordering out every night and not offering to pay once. I sprung for all the meals that week. That Friday, when the doorbell rang for the pizza delivery, I said to Liz, why don't you get dinner tonight? She gave me this funny look and says, oh, I thought you were paying. I don't have any cash on me. We had an agreement we would alternate every month on who paid for the utilities. We have to pay our cable and electric, and everything else comes with the rent. I paid the first round. The next month, I'm looking at the counter where we keep the mail stacked and the entire month goes by, and the electricity and cable bills are still sitting there unopened. Around the end of the month, I picked up the envelopes, handed them to her, and reminded her it was her month to pay. She takes them, tells me not to worry, and that was that, until we got the next month's bills, and the previous month's balances were still showing as being owed. After a week of gentle reminders, she hands me a check and tells me not to cash it until after payday. That has happened every month that it was her turn to pay.

So it goes on and on, and finally, I'll just read you the last paragraph of it. I started to get more and more frustrated with her, and she started to get crabbyer and crabbyer towards me. And then finally, the last week of October, we can go to the next slide, she turns up and says she's moving out over Thanksgiving weekend. I said fine. I was going to be out of town at my parents all weekend, and just leave her key on the counter for me when she left. You would not believe what I arrived home to yesterday morning. She apparently decided to throw a Thanksgiving party while I was gone and before she left. I walked in to find a half-eaten turkey carcass on the kitchen table, dirty pots and pans everywhere, plates still half full of food all over the apartment, and the refrigerator door was wide open. And worse, there was a half pie still in the oven, and the oven was still set to warm. The pie was fossilized. No sign of Liz, no sign of the key, and all of her stuff was gone.

So, I think we probably all experienced things to one degree or another. I've never experienced anything that bad. But it's not only roommates where you have trouble, is it, with kind of getting used to dwelling together. What about the first few years of marriage? So, question for all of the married guys in the room. How many of you had your own apartment or house before you got married?

A few. How many of you would say you kept more than half the furniture you had before you were married?

One. Okay. That's usually a sign of what happens, right? Because what is it typically? The ladies see it and they say, you want that ugly thing in my house? I'm not going to put up with that.

And maybe you keep some of the furniture and maybe it moves down to a guest room or somewhere in the basement and it slowly kind of works its way outside of the house. But it's not unusual, because the way that you live and the way that you're going to set up household together forces you to change, doesn't it? And that's really the point that I want to draw out here in terms of the personal element of living together. You're not the same person that you were before. The Bible even says, when you get married, what should you do?

You should leave your home, right? Leave your home and cleave to your spouse and set up a new life. And there's a reason for that, because it's an emotional thing and it's a way that you build your own life together.

And we can probably think back, all of us who are adults, to the first time that we went back home after we had moved away from home, right? Because you realize at that point that you've set up your own way of living, especially if you go back as a married person. You have your own rhythm of life, you have your own way of doing things. And it's not the same to go back to the house you grew up in, because, yeah, things work there the way they always did, but you've changed. And why have you changed? Because you've gone off and you've lived on your own, or you've gotten married and you've set up your own household and your own way of living because of the household.

So how we dwell, who we dwell with, is disruptive to our life. It's a change agent, and it's meant to be. So how do we think about this, and how do we compare it then to our Christian lives? Because, again, as this progression that we've seen going all through the Bible is the idea of God wanting to dwell with us, and being family with Him. I think that's where we really need to think the analogy through.

It shows up so much throughout the Bible. We've really got to process that in our minds. And are we in some ways treating ourselves as employees of God? And when we've completed the list of a few duties that we have for Him for the day, we take it, we compartmentalize it, we set it aside, and we go on, and we live our real life. Or do we view it as God living with us, and the disruption that that causes in a life, and the need for change, and setting up a new way of doing things as a result of living with someone?

We can go ahead and turn the projector off. We're done with our slides at this point. Romans 8. Let's turn to verses 7 through 14. The question is, God a comfortable dwelling companion in our lives. We heard the roommate stories, which obviously were not very comfortable. Romans 8 verses 7 through 14. We get a little bit of a taste of the disruption that God dwelling within us is supposed to cause as our lives change.

Verse 7, The carnal mind is enmity against God, because it's not subject to the law of God, nor indeed cannot be. So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You're not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if the spirit of God dwells in you, and if you don't have the spirit of Christ, you're not His. If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.

But if the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His spirit, again, that dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you'll die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.

So we talk about some pretty strong terms here, putting to death the things of our physical life because of God dwelling within us. Strong and stark language that's used. Let's turn also to 2 Corinthians. We'll read 2 Corinthians 5.

2 Corinthians 5, and we'll read verses 14 through 17.

2 Corinthians 5, 14. For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus, that if one died for all, then all died, and he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we've known Christ according to the flesh, we know him thus no longer.

So if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new. In essence, he's saying what we were talking about a moment ago. When Jesus Christ is living within you, when he's dwelling in you, you're changing. And I think many people will make the comment that as they've come and begun their walk with Jesus Christ, become converted, when you go back and you start talking with people from an era of your life when you had different priorities, when God was not a part of your life, there's a disconnect there. You might still be friends at some level, but it's different. Very similar to going back home after you've lived on your own for several years and trying to fit into the rhythm of things at home. It's just different.

It's not the same because you're not connected in the same way. You don't have the same priorities, and you've changed because of God dwelling in you in this case, the way that you live.

Let's turn to one more passage that talks about this and takes it then to the next step, which is Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4. We'll read verses 25 through 32. Ephesians 4, verse 25 through 32.

Talks here a lot about the things that we should be putting on as a result of God dwelling within us. Verse 25, therefore put away lying. Let each of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we're members of one another. Be angry and don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need.

Don't let any corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification that it may impart grace to the hearers. And don't grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. So now the word here used for grieve, because we sometimes hear this term of don't grieve the Holy Spirit, means to afflict with sorrow, to make sad or sorrowful. And it's rendered in most places as either being sorry or sorrowful or having heaviness.

It's a very personal term. Okay, we might sometimes say that we're really grieved by something that happened in our lives, and we are. It's usually related to someone close to us. We don't usually hear somebody say they're grieved by the guy who cut through a yellow light, right? And they're not grieved by the checkout person who gave them paper instead of plastic. It's a personal thing. And again, comes back to this idea of dwelling, right? And as we read in this passage in Ephesians 4, it talks about the Holy Spirit dwelling within us and the things that should be coming out of our actions and out of our lives as a result of God through His Spirit dwelling in us. And then it says don't grieve that spirit. The way we grieve that spirit is the same way we grieve our spouses or other people that we live with, right? By doing things that are not consistent with the relationship that we have with the commitments that we have to one another. And those can really grieve people. Marital infidelity grieves people for those who have gone through it. You hear about people who have family members come and live with them and steal from them. That grieves people.

There's a depth of sorrow there, and there's a betrayal in those types of actions that it's just very hard to stomach and to live with. Falling into addictions are things that, you know, on a physical level can grieve the people that you're living with because you have that very close relationship and you have a member of that relationship going off and beginning to move into something that is completely outside the bounds of and outside of the commonality and the trust that's part of that relationship. And when we think about that in terms of God dwelling within us, we need to think in the same way. I think we feel that in our lives as well. We're making choices every day as different situations come up. And God living in us through the Holy Spirit, what is it that's consistent with that relationship and keeps moving along with the way that that relationship goes? And what things are there in our lives that are not consistent with the way that God is as He lives with us? Those are the things that grieve the Holy Spirit. And I would say we probably feel those things within ourselves. Maybe not in the moment when we're doing something we shouldn't, but as we stop and reflect and hopefully pray about it, we realize and we feel that depth of grief within ourselves because we feel ourselves in those actions tearing away from the relationship that we have with God, moving in a different direction than this being that's dwelling with us. That's the closeness of that relationship that I think God wants to come home to us as we think about this entire progression through the Bible.

So as we wrap up and think more about those things, I want to turn to Revelation 21, because there's one more step in this progression that completes the entire picture.

And I find it fascinating that, again, the idea of dwelling is there at the end of the story, just like it was at the very beginning of the story. Very familiar passage of Revelation 21.

Revelation 21 will read verses 1 through 4.

Here John says, So we think about God and who and what He is and what He's trying to accomplish.

This is not the only example. There are other things where we see strong consistencies all the way through the Bible about the mind of God. But to me, this is just so central in the way of how God is, what His mentality is towards us, what He wants from us, what He wants to do with us, and ultimately what He wants to accomplish for all of mankind.

So as we go forward through our next week and our walk with God, let's remember that God is dwelling with us.