What is God's Permanent Address?

Good afternoon again. I'll echo the sentiments on art's special music. Appreciate that very much.

I know in talking with with art how much time and care he spends picking out the songs that he sings as well, and that always comes through. And not only how you sing, but the lyrics, and always very meaningful and very touching. Appreciate that. How many of you have filled out a legal form recently, whether it's a registration for something, or a bank account application, or a rent form?

Yeah, see a few sheepish hands going up.

One of the things that's always asked for is your permanent address. Now, it seems a little odd, maybe, nowadays, to ask for a permanent address because it seems like things are more temporary than they used to be. People move around quite a lot, where it used to be fairly common to know that people were from certain villages and owned certain land and stayed in certain homes, maybe for generations. That becomes a lot less customary now than it used to be. Just for interest's sake, I'll ask, we're going to do a couple audience polls today to keep everybody awake. How long have you lived in the home that you're in today? How many would say less than five years in the home that you're in today? Okay, quite a few. How about five to ten years? I have to raise my hand for that one.

More than ten years. More than 15. More than 20. 25. Okay, we got some long timers here. That's good.

Permanence. How long we're living. So, our question for today, if you like titles, is, what is God's permanent address? Maybe take a minute and jot a note or two and what your thoughts are on that. What is God's permanent address? If you had to write down his address, what would it be? Maybe more importantly, if he had to write down his address, what would he write down as his permanent address? Let's turn to Acts 2.

We're going to read verses 1 through 4. And this might seem like a bit of a departure, but we'll come back around to that question when we wrap things up today of what God's permanent address is. Acts 2 verses 1 through 4. I think this is a fairly familiar verse to many of us.

It describes that first day of Pentecost after the death of Jesus Christ when the Holy Spirit came. Acts 2, starting in verse 1. When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place, talking about the people who had followed Jesus Christ. And suddenly there came the sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And then there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one sat on each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, what I'd like to focus on for the message today is in verse 3.

There appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one sat on each of them.

Now, it's interesting because we don't really see a lot else said in the Bible about tongues of fire.

I can't really think of other places. There are plenty of appearances of fire, and we'll talk about that in a bit. But we don't really see anything like this really repeating itself in this sort of a way. In Matthew 3 verse 11, John the Baptist indicates that when Jesus comes, his baptism, as distinct from John the Baptist's baptism, would be via the Holy Spirit and fire. So we recognize this, at least in part, as a fulfillment of that prophecy that John the Baptist made. But we're left to ask, why would fire need to appear? Why was it useful? Why was it impactful? What was the meaning of fire appearing concurrent with the Holy Spirit being given to that small group of believers on that first day of Pentecost? And as we think about it, we need to think about also what the symbol meant to the people who were alive at that time.

Because if we read through the next section of Scripture from verse 5 on, we also see that there were presumably a large number of people around because there are onlookers who are talked about, who are hearing and seeing what it is that's going on, and they list actually 15 different languages that were being spoken when the people were speaking in tongues after the Holy Spirit came.

And so it's clear that there were enough people there that would have been able to recognize what those 15 languages were and see what it was that was going on. And that's not necessarily unusual when you think about the historical context when this was happening. Pentecost was one of the three major pilgrim feasts for ancient Israel, and it would have been kept by everyone, kept religiously at that time, pun intended. Okay, tough crowd today.

They would have been keeping that feast very seriously as a pilgrim feast. And what would have happened? Jerusalem at that time was a city with a population of people think between 100,000 and 200,000 people. How big do you think Jerusalem got at the point in time when everyone descended on Jerusalem from the known world, Jews from around the world, who could make it there for Pentecost? How many would say it would double in size? How many would say triple? How many would say four times? Okay, why not? Four times. Well, people estimate that around a million people were in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost. So you'd have people coming from all over the known world, and Jerusalem would swell to something like five to maybe even 10 times its size, because there were so many people there. So it wouldn't be unusual that you'd have people recognizing all of those different languages. But again, going back to our question, what would they have thought about the fire? How many people witnessed this occurrence happening?

What would they have thought when they saw tongues of fire sitting on the heads of individuals?

Well, let's start by looking at fire itself and what it symbolizes and what it's used to symbolize in the Old Testament scriptures. We'll turn to three different passages and just talk a little bit about what we see. And what we're going to see pretty clearly is that fire is associated with the presence of God. I don't think that comes to as too much of a surprise to us, and we can probably think of a few verses and a few instances where that would take place. The first one that I'll turn to and ask you to join me in is Exodus 3. We'll read verses 1 through 4. Exodus 3 verses 1 through 4.

This is the account of Moses. As we recall, Moses was raised in the house of Pharaoh. He came to understand that he had been a children of the Israelites who were enslaved there. He'd seen one of the Egyptian overseers abusing a slave and killed that Egyptian, then had to flee when it was found out. And so he was living out in the wilderness with his father-in-law at that time, Jethro, after he'd been married. And Exodus 3 verse 1, it tells us that Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, who was a priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire. So here we see fire appearing with the angel of the Lord from the midst of a bush. And so he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. And then Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight why the bush doesn't burn. Makes sense.

You're walking through the wilderness, you see a bush on fire, but it's not being consumed. That's worth looking a little more closely at to see what's going on. And in verse 4, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush, and he said, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here I am. And of course, in the subsequent vision, he identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So we know that wasn't just an angel that appeared with this manifestation of fire, but it was the God of the Old Testament himself, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The other thing we know is it wasn't a literal flame. If it was a literal flame, then God would have had to perform a miracle and didn't burn up the bush. As we'll see in the other associations where God comes with a manifestation of fire, the fact, I think, that it didn't burn up the bush shows that it was a manifestation of God himself, the fact that he was there that caused this fire that was seen. It's a supernatural appearance. And I know Mark Graham has given messages on this in the past, where he's gone through some of these different verses as well.

It's a manifestation that we see as human beings of God's presence. Let's turn, interestingly, to the same geographical location in Exodus 19, because this burning bush episode in Exodus 3 talked about the fact that he was in the desert and came to Horeb, which is another name for the area of the Mount of Mount Sinai. Exodus 19, we're going to see some similar things happening.

This time when the children of Israel were out by Mount Sinai and when the law was given, the Mosaic covenant was given to the children of Israel. Exodus 19, we'll start in verse 17.

Here we read, Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire.

Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly, and when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him by voice. And in verse 20, then the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. If we remember things that happened as Moses was on the mountain for some time, he came down and his face was actually shiny. He had to cover his face with a veil because that glory of God, this manifestation of fire, was so bright that it actually illuminated his own face and his face shone for a while because of that exposure that he had to where God specifically was. So again, we see, by coincidence, in the same place, Mount Sinai, we see God coming down, and again we see fire being shown as part of God's presence. Let's look at one other place, and this time the fire also becomes literal as it comes down. We'll turn to 1 Kings 18. We're all familiar with Elijah the prophet, at least to me in my consciousness. I hadn't really thought often that much about how significant Elijah is as a prophet, but if we look, for example, the Jewish tradition, one of the traditions at a Jewish Seder meal is that there's an empty chair that's left there, and it's left there for the coming of Elijah. He's considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, prophet because of what he did in conquering idolatrous worship in Israel and returning Israel to the worship of the true God.

And so this story would have been very much at the forefront of any person who would have grown up as a Jew at that time, and certainly as it is now. And we'll read 1 Kings 18. We'll start in verse 33.

What we're seeing here is the culmination of the entire battle between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. If we remember, there was Jezebel, who was the wicked queen. This is a great story. It's got all the different elements of a gripping story, right? We've got King Ahab, slightly weak, easily pushed around, doesn't really have a strong moral compass. We've got Jezebel, the conniving wife who comes in, kind of takes control of Ahab and starts pushing him forward and using his power to drive her agenda, which includes worship of Baal, who is a pagan god. She oppresses all of the true prophets of God. They go into hiding. They're despairing because they think they've pretty much died out.

And then in comes Elijah, inspired by God, brought before the king, delivers the edict that there's not going to be any rain for seven years. God's going to prove who the true God is. And so they go through seven years of drought, and this is the culmination of that entire time. They meet up on the mountain, Mount Carmel, and they have a contest for the entire day of all these prophets of Baal who are dancing around doing their incantations and everything that they do.

And the contest is that whoever is God brings fire from heaven is the true God. And if we start then in verse 33, this is after the prophets of Baal have all done their thing. They've danced around, they've yelled and screamed until they're hoarse, they're lying exhausted and part on the ground, and Elijah walks in quietly, puts the wood in order in verse 33 of 1 Kings 18, cuts the bull in pieces and lays it on the wood, and then he said, fill four water pots with water and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, pour it on the wood. When they got done doing that in verse 34, he said, do it a second time. And they did a second time, and he said, do it a third time. And they did it a third time. So that in verse 35, we see that water ran all around the altar and also filled the trench that was around the altar. So Elijah was making a point here. He was saying, not only am I going to call fire down from heaven, which will be delivered by God, not by Elijah, but in order to make sure that there's no doubt that there's anything but a miracle happening, we're going to douse the sacrifice. And not only are we going to douse the sacrifice, we're going to douse it three times until there's water all over anything. So that physically, you're trying to light a fire on this, it just isn't going to happen. He was trying to take away every shred of doubt about how this was happening, the fact that it was going to be God through supernatural means that was going to deliver. And then in verse 38, the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the bird sacrifice and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench.

All consuming fire. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, the Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God. So we see three different manifestations here in the Old Testament, just very small sample, essentially, of different episodes where this happened, where God was signified either as very presence or as power by fire. All of these would have been stories that would have been well known. Mount Sinai, Moses, Elijah, and any Jew in the first century would have associated fire through these examples and others with God Himself. So fire signifies God's very presence. Let's pivot a little bit now and talk about what's unique about how it appeared on Pentecost. Because the way fire appeared on Pentecost was different than the way it appeared in different situations. Let's read again in Acts 2, verse 3. There appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. So what I want to do now is turn to a couple examples of enduring fire that's in the Old Testament. If I can ask you, just take a minute and type a couple notes into your phone or jot a note on the piece of paper. If you had identified a couple incidents in the Old Testament where there was fire that endured for a long period of time, not like the offering of Elijah where fire came down, consumed everything, and was gone. Not like the burning bush, which eventually, once God was done talking with Moses, was extinguished, or that glory of God went away. Not like Mount Sinai, where when the law was finished being delivered, the fire and the thunder and the smoke went away. What examples can you think of in the Old Testament where the fire was there and it remained for an extended period of time? Got a note or two jotted down? Good.

Chances are we guessed at least one of the two. Let's turn to Numbers 9. We'll read Numbers 9.

We'll start in verse 15, and this is talking about the tabernacle in the Old Testament, Numbers 9, and starting in verse 15. There's a lot written in the Pentateuch about the temple, how worship is to take place at the temple, how it's supposed to be prepared. This is talking about the temple itself, Numbers 9, verse 15. Now, on the day that the tabernacle was raised up, I should have said tabernacle because it's the temporary dwelling that the children of Israel had for God, which was made so it could be dismantled, taken down, and could travel with them. On that day, the tabernacle was raised up, and the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of testimony from evening until morning.

It was above the tabernacle, like the appearance of fire. So here we see fire again, and it says like the appearance of fire because it's talking about something. That's the best way that they could really explain what it was. It's not literal fire, or it would have burned up the tabernacle.

And so it was always in verse 16. The cloud covered it by day and the appearance of fire by night. Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, after that the children of Israel would journey, and in the place where the cloud settled there the children of Israel would pitch their tents. At the command of the Lord, the children of Israel would journey, and at the command of the Lord they would camp. As long as the cloud stayed above the tabernacle, they remained encamped. Even when the cloud continued long, many days above the tabernacle, the children of Israel kept the charge of the Lord and did not journey. And so it was when the cloud was above the tabernacle a few days, according to the command of the Lord, they would remain encamped. And according to the command of the Lord, they would journey. So it was when the cloud remained only from evening till morning. When the cloud was taken up in the morning, then they would journey.

Whether by day or by night, whenever the cloud was taken up, they would journey. Whether it was two days, a month, or a year that the cloud remained above the tabernacle, the children of Israel would remain encamped and not journey. But when it was taken up, they would journey. At the command of the Lord, they remained encamped, and at the command of the Lord, they journeyed. They kept the charge of the Lord at the command of the Lord by the hand of Moses. That's kind of interesting how repetitive this verse is. I think nowadays, you know, if this was turned into a Twitter tweet, it would probably just say, cloud and fire above tabernacle, stay, cloud lifts, go. Right? Short and sweet. But that's what it's getting at.

What's interesting to me is how often it talks about it being above the tabernacle, the cloud and the fire.

It's sat above the tabernacle. And we see exactly the similar thing happening on the Day of Pentecost, don't we? The flame. Where did the flame sit instead of above a tabernacle? A physical tabernacle? It sat above individual human beings, didn't it? Something for us to think about and that we will come back to in a little bit. Now, when was the cloud or the fire first seen? It was well before this episode in Numbers because we see even before the Red Sea crossing that the pillar of flame was there.

It was a separation as the Israelites were getting ready to go into the Red Sea that kept the armies of the Egyptians at bay. And they were afraid and they couldn't attack Israel as Israel was on the banks of the Red Sea because the fire was there to protect them. And as we read, it guided their movements as people. So for 40 years, again, the question here was enduring fire. This is one of the examples of long enduring fire, isn't it? It would have been more than 40 years because we know even at the time that the flame would have been with them already at the time when Israel rebelled.

And at that point, they were told 40 years you're going to wander in the desert. So for more than 40 years, this flame was with them, this fire. It was an enduring presence. It was God showing that above this tabernacle in this place, this is how he was dwelling with his people, with the nation of Israel. And at the time then that Israel entered the Promised Land, the tabernacle was folded up. It wasn't traveling with the people anymore. The tribes went off to the different land that they inherited, and there is not a recorded episode of that fire for quite some time.

Now what's referred to biblically as the glory of God, and we read about that in numbers, is often sometimes referred to as the Shekinah glory. Has anyone heard that term before, the Shekinah glory? Shekinah is a Hebrew word, and it's used by theologians. It doesn't actually appear in the Bible, but it's used by theologians, and comes out of some of the older Jewish manuscripts as referring to this, what we see in the Bible referred to as the glory of God, this shining light, the clouds, the manifestation of fire. The word is related in the Hebrew language to word shakhan, which means to dwell or to reside, and it has the added emphasis of being a permanent resident in a community. And so the association here that the Jewish scholars, as they were studying this and thinking about this, applied this word because they recognized this fire as showing God's abiding presence, the fact that he was dwelling there, he was living there long term, like a permanent dwelling place, being a permanent resident with a community, in this case, the community of Israel. Now I don't want to make too much of Jewish tradition, it's extra biblical, but at the same time, they spent a lot of time studying the scriptures and seeking understanding. I think it is an interesting view and helps us also to understand how people who were seeing what was happening on that day of Pentecost, again, would have thought of fire and flame coming and sitting on top of something. They were aware of this shekhanah glory and the fact that to them it meant being a permanent resident in a community, the fact that God had permanently resided with Israel through that time in the wilderness. This element of dwelling with Israel is also borne out by Scripture. Turn with me if you will to Acts 29.

So even though the word shekhanah doesn't exist in the scriptures, the concept of dwelling with Israel and the fact that God was there permanently dwelling with them is in the scripture in Acts 29.

We'll read verses 43 through 45.

Here God, speaking to Moses, says, 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 an altar. I will consecrate both Aaron and his sons to minister to me as priests. I will dwell among the children of Israel, and I will be their God. So the way God revealed himself to the children of Israel was not only this impersonal God, somebody who'd kind of be with them, follow them around, this ethereal idea that was off in the distance.

God said he would dwell with them, and he showed in a tangible way that they could see every day and every night that he was dwelling with them through the presence of this pillar of fire at night and the pillar of clouds by day, again showing a permanent abiding dwelling place. So as I mentioned, once the children of Israel entered the Promised Land, this manifestation went away. The children of Israel, we can see there, they parceled up the Promised Land.

You can look at charts and Bible maps and so forth. You can see exactly where each of the different tribes settled from north to south. A couple tribes was a GAD and the half-tribe of Manasseh, if I remember right, settled on the other side of the Jordan because they liked the land that they saw there. And they all settled the land, and they settled in, and for quite some period of time there was no glory of that sort. There was no tabernacle where there was fire appearing above it.

So that brings us to our second example. Who can think of what the second example is of permanent fire that comes? It comes in the time of Solomon, and we'll read about it in 2 Chronicles 7. 2 Chronicles 7 verses 1 through 4. So we probably remember that Israel went through the time they were settled in the land, we went through the time of the judges and the prophets, and Israel kind of went through this back and forth, this cycle of doing what they wanted to do, having cataclysm happen to them.

God would come in and they would turn back to God when they were in a dire strait. Things would go well, and they'd begin the cycle again. This happened through the time of the judges and the prophets. And then finally, Israel looked around and said, we want a king like the rest of the nations. They had King Saul as a start. And then Samuel also, as we remember, ordained anointed David as king. David wanted to build God a temple, but God said, David, you've been too bloody of a man. You fought all these battles, you killed so many people, sometimes coloring outside the lines, as David was wont to do.

And he said, you're not going to be able to build the temple. So David began preparations. He must have talked a lot with his son Solomon about the temple, because it was among the early things that Solomon took on, probably one of his crowning achievement. So Solomon built the temple that stood for centuries until Israel, or Judah in this case, went into captivity. And 2 Chronicles 7, we're only going to read a short part of it. To me, it's really interesting and moving passage to read. I'd recommend going back and reading a little more around this.

But 2 Chronicles 7 is at the end of Solomon's prayer. Solomon offers a very moving prayer as he's dedicating the temple, worth reading and spending some time with. But I want to know what happens after that. Again, a very incredible, miraculous occurrence.

2 Chronicles 7, verse 1, when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering of the sacrifices. So they had an altar that was set up in the temple. They put an offering there. And very similar to what we saw in the time of Elijah, except this was no contest this time, it wasn't something that was even specifically being asked for. If you read Solomon's prayer, Solomon does not say, God, come down and devour this sacrifice with fire. He offers this moving prayer. But then fire comes down from heaven and consumes the burnt offering and the sacrifice. And the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

And the priest could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord's house. And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshipped and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good, his mercy endures forever.

And the king and all the people offered sacrifices before the Lord. So the people there, these stories of going through the desert, the stories of God dwelling with Israel, the pillar of fire in the cloud, would have had to have been with the people. And so the association, what they would have known as this fire came down into the temple, which was a permanent building that was built instead of the old tabernacle that used to exist, to see that same glory of God, to see that same fire coming in, would have had incredible symbolism for them. Because they would have thought back to the children of Israel and the decades that they spent moving across the desert. And the fact that God was there dwelling with them and manifesting his dwelling with them through that fire. And how he was coming in the very same way, this time to a more permanent temple that had his altar in it, and again, showing the fire there. And recall this Hebrew word that we talked about, shakan, which is used by the rabbis to talk about the glory of God, and how it indicates permanence, a permanent place of dwelling, not just being a guest, but being permanent.

Now, to ask another question, we'll ask for a show of hands, and I'll give you the multiple choice answers first. You can think about it. For how long do you think this glory stayed over the temple?

And the choice is going to be weeks, months, years, decades, or centuries.

How many would go with weeks? A little bit? All right. Months, years, decades, centuries. Okay, it's kind of split all over the place. Let's turn to Ezekiel 10.

Indication from the Scripture would be centuries.

Ezekiel 10 talks about the time when right before Judah is going into captivity, and Ezekiel has a vision, and the vision is talking about the glory of the Lord departed from the temple, which would seem to imply, and if you read commentaries and things, you would see that most people would think it's been centuries, and not really something you think much about, but centuries that this glory would have been there over the temple.

Ezekiel 10, verse 18, here in Ezekiel's vision, the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple. It would be no reason to depart if it weren't there in the first place. Stood over the carobim. The carobim lifted their wings in verse 19, mounted up from the earth in my sight, and when they went out, the wheels were beside them. 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. Now, when we think about this symbolism of the fire being God's permanent place of dwelling, imagine the incredible symbolism of this vision that Ezekiel had. Because what he was saying with this fire retreating out of the temple and moving out, what was he saying? God's leaving, right? God's permanent presence, dwelling with the nation of Judah in this case, was leaving. He was removing his hand. Now, you talk about something that would strike fear into the pit of your stomach if you were a person of any amount of faith. And seeing this vision, if people saw this literally happening, what that would mean, as you understand, that God has taken his hand away and is no longer there after guiding and sustaining people. It would certainly be a fearful thing.

So let's come back around to what we were asking about in this section of the message, and that's the tongues of fire. We haven't really talked about tongues, and tongues of fire don't appear very much in the scripture. But let's go back then to what happened on that day of Pentecost.

We're not told exactly where this happened when the Holy Spirit came. There are different theories in there, but we do know that there were enough people there that people who recognized 15 different languages were there witnessing what happened. And we know that people saw fire coming.

Now, when we compare this to the time that Solomon asked his prayer and the fire came in and consumed what was on the altar in the temple, it was pretty incredible in terms of manifestation of God, where he was and where he was dwelling. And this is what I think is so powerful about this one verse that talks about Pentecost. Because no matter how many people were there, some commentators would even speculate that Acts 2 actually happened within the temple grounds.

We don't know if that's the case. Whoever saw it would have seen fire coming just like it came when Solomon dedicated his temple, and instead of sitting on an altar or something that was consecrated to God, it sat on individual human beings instead. And when you start thinking about all of these things that fire means, the presence of God, how it was there in the burning bush, how it was there on Mount Sinai, how it consumed Elijah's offering, think about the temple when Solomon dedicated and how the fire came and then sat for a lengthy period of time over the altar in the temple. And now, when fire comes again, where does it sit? It manifests and sits itself right on top of individual human beings, people who are following Jesus Christ, people to whom the Holy Spirit was given. A tangible show, a recognition of where God was setting up a permanent dwelling place. And that's where we'll go here in the balance of this message, is talking about ourselves as Christians as the permanent dwelling place of God. So we started by asking the question, what's God's permanent address? If God had to fill out a form at the BMV, what would he write down as his permanent address? He'd have a whole bunch of them, wouldn't he? Everyone here in the room, God is showing and showed through the manifestation on that day of Pentecost, through the Holy Spirit, God dwells in us as individual Christians. And it's more than an interesting analogy. It's voiced clearly in the Scriptures. So let's look at three elements here in the balance of the sermon about Christians as the dwelling place of God. First of all, let's just look at the fact that the Bible clearly does say that God dwells in us. Turn with me, if you will, to Romans 8. Romans 8. There's this enduring theme through the Bible about God wanting to dwell with mankind, isn't there? Think of the Garden of Eden, the very first accounts of mankind. What does it talk about? It talks about God walking with them in the cool of the evening. God dwelled with them until they rejected his way. We come back when God calls Abraham. He actually comes out to meet with him and talk with him and spend time with him. We see the children of Israel and how God dwelled with them as a nation. We see the temple period and how God came again and showed his presence there. Romans 8 doesn't stop at the end of the Old Testament. In fact, it becomes so much more real after the coming of the Holy Spirit because that is the means by which God can and does dwell in us. Romans 8 starting in verse 9. You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.

And if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. Several times it's said here for emphasis, so there's no mistake. God, through his Spirit, dwells in us. That aspiration that God had all the way from the beginning of creation to dwell with men, to be with men, to be within our hearts, to change who and what we are so that we live different lives, fulfilled through the coming of the Holy Spirit, which makes this possible. And then Paul ties it back in Corinthians to the Old Testament experience of the tabernacle or the temple.

1 Corinthians 6 verse 19. Paul uses the analogy as he's talking with the Corinthians and things that they're doing, the sins that they're getting caught up in because of the society around them.

And in verse 19 of 1 Corinthians 6 he says to the Corinthians, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? So Paul now drawing this analogy as well very closely with that dwelling with God, dwelling in us through the Spirit, just as he dwelled in the temple. He's analogizing our bodies as temples. And we can probably think of other verses within the New Testament, which we won't turn to, that have similar types of verbiage in them. So that's the first element here of Christians as a dwelling place of God, that the Bible clearly says that God does dwell in us through his Spirit. Secondly, the permanence of that dwelling is also clear.

Second thing about God dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit is permanence.

I'll turn to one of my favorite scriptures, which is Philippians 1 verses 3 through 6.

There are a number of different scriptures that we can probably all think about that talk about the level of commitment that God has to us. The fact that he's not going to give up on us, the fact that he wants to see us attain eternal life, and unless we turn our face from him, it's a commitment that he's going to keep from his side. Philippians 1 verses 3 through 6.

Philippians 1 verse 3, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, making request for you with all joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from this first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. So the tie-in of this, this permanence, remember we talked about the word that Hebrew scholars have used, shekana, relates this Hebrew word that means a permanent dwelling, not just being a guest, a commitment, dwelling there for good. This is born out here in the scriptures as we see Paul write to the Philippians, the fact that God fully intends to complete the work that he's begun in us. There are many other scriptures that you can find in the Bible, how God talks about things that are not as though they were, how he talks about us saying that we are now the children of God, even though we've not been changed to spirit. And that demonstrates the commitment, the level of commitment that God has, and the permanence of his commitment to us. It's not that God wakes up one day and kind of looks at us and says, you know, I've gotten kind of sick of you, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm just going to move on. It sounds ridiculous because we know that's so completely against the way that God thinks and works, an absolute commitment of permanence in how he's working with us. And let's look then at a third element of Christians as the dwelling place of God, and that is that dwelling with someone compels change. Dwelling with someone compels change. So let's have another show of hands. How many people in this room have been married, are currently married, and have been married for less than five years?

All right, we've got a fair number. People have been married for less than five years. So think of the adjustments that happen when you're married, and those of us who've been married for longer than five years can probably also think back to some of those adjustments. And you know, those early years of marriage are wonderful, and they're fantastic, but if we're honest, they're also challenging, aren't they? They can be difficult, because what are you doing those first few years of marriage? As you're living together, you're bringing together two people who are used to living in different ways. And no matter how well they know each other, no matter how young or old they are, they have ways of doing things, they have ways of thinking about things that have to be meshed together. And it's not simple, it's not easy. Sometimes it's trivial things, isn't it?

Does the toilet paper roll go, you know, overlapping or underlapping? How do you make the bed?

Kind of, you know, how do you fold your sheets? How do you put your towels up on the rack? Do you double them, or do you fold them in thirds? And some things can be a whole lot more serious.

How do you deal with money? Do you want to have children or not? And how many?

All of these different things. Two lives have to come together, two minds, two ways of doing things, two wills have to come together, and they have to reconcile and find a joint way to go about doing things. But you know, even in less permanent relationships, there are adjustments, aren't there? And just having somebody live with you can make a huge difference. If you think about people who've gone to college, we probably all had, whether it's friends or kids or other acquaintances who've gone off to college, and if maybe they're going to college where you're required to live in a dorm for the first year, what are they stressed out over? Who's my roommate going to be? Right? Because who you live with, who you dwell with, who you spend that time with, can make such a huge difference. And you can hear these horror stories about people who have terrible roommates, and you can also hear these fantastic stories. They're still college roommates who I'm friends with today and I stay in touch with. Chances are there are others of varying ages who are in the same situation, because you get to know each other really well, living in the same quarters with somebody. But it can also change the way that you are. Even getting a pet can change the way you live, can't it? I know we have people here who've gotten dogs recently, bringing a puppy into your home. It changes your life. I haven't experienced it myself, but I've heard the stories from everyone. When you get up, what you have to do when you get up, what your priorities are in the morning, because that dog is going to need something. So whether you're living with other human beings, whether you're living with animals, living with other living beings, changes your life.

It causes a transformation, a change in the way that you do things. It causes an adjustment. So I don't think this idea, this word of God dwelling in us, is no accident. God wants to make a home with us. But what that means is change. We can't pretend that we would have a stranger live with us, and nothing would change in the way that we do things. I think about this old saying that you've probably heard that says, guests and fish both stink after three days. And it's one of those things that's funny because it's true. Because unless it's somebody that you know really well, after two or three days, you can put up with just about anything. You find a way to deal with it, you move on. But once somebody stays longer than that, if you have a guest for a week, a month, two or three months, if you don't figure things out, it can be a challenge, can't it?

Because living together for those longer periods of time causes those adjustments that you have to make, and the changes that you have to make. And remember, when we talked about it, the fact that this word that at least Hebrew scholars use to describe the glory of God implied coming to live permanently and not as a guest. I think that's something we have to think about in our own lives as we look at it. Do we treat God as a guest? Someone we love to have around when we need something? Somebody who can get us out of a jam when things are tough. But once we're done, God will move down the road. He'll live with someone else for a while. We'll give him a call back when we need something else. Or do we view God as somebody who's living permanently with us? And as a result of that permanent dwelling within us, we have to make lasting change. Because we're accommodating the mind of God that's come into our lives. We've agreed to give up our own lives and give up our own wills through baptism, through repentance, and to transform our lives and have them be changed by him living in us. Turn with me, if you will, to Romans 12. This is described very aptly in scriptures. I think we know Romans 12.1 pretty well, lay down your lives as living sacrifices to God. Romans 12.2 really is the punchline, though. Romans 12.2 talks about this change that has to happen with us in us because of God dwelling there. Romans 12 verse 2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you can prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

So that will of God as he lives within us through his Holy Spirit means that we have to be transformed to no longer follow our physical mind, the desires of our flesh, the things that we want to do. We have to be tuned into that perfect will of God who is living in us in a permanent way and continually pushing and urging us to change and conform to his way of being.

Turn with me, if you will, to Galatians 2.20. Paul puts it here also in a very common verse, talking about the fact that we have to accommodate ourselves and give up ourselves to following the will of God who lives in us. Galatians 2 verse 20.

Here Paul writes, I've been crucified with Christ, and it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. Christ lives in me, is the statement that Paul makes, and all the change that comes along with that. So permanence causes us a requirement to change and adjust.

That's what we signed up for, and when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, it is what it demands of us. And if we're honest about it, if we're sitting back and listening to the will of God through his Spirit, we're feeling that push every day in our lives, aren't we? I'm reminded of a meme that I've seen on Facebook a few times that some friends have posted, and it's sheep that are out in a pasture. And I think they've got their phones up in front of them, and maybe a radio blaring, and one sheep turns to the other and says, hey, I can't hear the shepherd, can you?

And it's actually a very apt comedy, really, comic about what our lives are like, isn't it? Because our lives get filled with so many different things that we're tuned into that sometimes we don't hear the voice of the shepherd. We don't hear what God is working within us through his Spirit, because we've filled ourselves with so many other things that are competing for our time and for our attention. And we don't have the ability to sit still, to take some time back, whatever it is, to go for a walk, to spend a quiet moment, to reflect on God's Word, and to listen to what it is that God's Holy Spirit is telling us within ourselves as we tune into God living within us and what his will is for us. So let's come back to where we started. God's permanent address.

I think we've talked about what that permanent address is, and we recognize that God has set up his dwelling within individual Christians. That's who and what we are. And when we read that account to the first Pentecost, and we see how the Holy Spirit came, and it divided itself in tongues of fire, we understand the fact that this is God's very presence coming in and manifesting itself and showing a clear indication that he's going to set up a permanent dwelling within individual human beings, living within us. We'll celebrate that feast a week from tomorrow.

So as we think about this, and we've gone through everything in the message today, hopefully we have a clear answer now for that question of what God's permanent address is.

Through the events of Pentecost, we understand that his permanent address is each and every one of us, the individual Christians that he's called, and our responsibility as his dwelling is to continue to grow and to transform our lives as we allow his spirit to rule within us.