A woman told of going to her Bible study at church and telling her 3-year-old son, Chad, they were going to God’s house. Each time they walked through the quiet sanctuary on their way to the nursery, Chad looked around in awe. It was a beautiful building. One day however, the child asked, “Mommy, if this is God’s house, how come He’s never home?” (Karen Ketzler, Fort Wayne, IN. Today’s Christian Woman, “Heart to Heart.”)
In our text today, Solomon is about to build the first Temple in Jerusalem. It was a beautiful and imposing structure. The Jewish historian Josephus reported that the Temple of his day was “covered on all sides with massive plates of gold,” and when the sun struck it, “it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes, as from solar rays.” It was a showpiece. A place of wonder and majesty; a place where people felt as if they were in the very presence of God.
Now, there’s an interesting observation that Solomon made: “The house that I am to build will be great - for our God is greater than all gods. But who is able to build him a house - since heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him? Who am I to build a house for him, except as a place to make offerings before him?” II Chronicles 2:5-6
God was too big to dwell in a house made by human hands. Even the highest heaven could not contain our God! And yet, this Temple was spoken of as the place where God dwelt.
Now, centuries before Solomon built this temple - Israel had worshipped at a tent-like structure that was called the Tabernacle. The tabernacle was NOT nearly as huge and as impressive as the Temple. And yet, God told Moses: “(The Israelites) are to make a sanctuary for me (the Tabernacle) so that I may dwell among them” Exodus 25:8
Essentially God was saying “I don’t need a place to dwell”. But you… you need for me to dwell WITH you. God said: I want a place where I can DWELL with you … and the tabernacle & the temple were built to serve that purpose.
What’s intriguing is that when the Tabernacle was dedicated we’re told that “The cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.” Exodus 40:34-35
And later, when the Temple was dedicated it says that “The glory of the LORD filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD filled the LORD’s house.” II Chronicles 7:1-2
God filled the Tabernacle and the Temple so He could DWELL with His people.
But WHY would that be important - for GOD to dwell with us? Well, because that was God’s way of saying that we’re important to Him. I mean… if somebody doesn’t like you they’re not going to want you to come over to their house; they’re not going to want to hang out with you.
But the Tabernacle & Temple were God’s way of saying – I like you. I want to be around you. You’re important to me. You matter to me. I want to be where you are!
Now David understood that concept. That’s why he wrote the famous words “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.” David understood that God loved him and that God would guide and protect him, and that God would never abandon him. “I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”
David was so committed to that truth that God said of him ‘I have found in David … a man after my own heart - who will do all my will.’ (Acts 13:22). David lived his life as a man who knew that God loved him, and that drove him to do God’s will wherever he could!
So, when GOD said “I want to dwell among (my people)” He was saying – I love them, and I want to live close to them so that I can watch over them and protect them.
But there was a problem. A problem that made it so that God couldn’t get TOO close to His people. You see, God wanted to be WITH His people, but those people weren’t allowed to get too close to Him. In the tabernacle and Temple – God was INSIDE & the people were OUTSIDE! In fact, God was inside, the INSIDE of the Temple. The Temple was composed of two rooms… and there was a huge curtain inside the Temple. And behind that curtain was where God dwelt! God was in the back room. Everybody but the high priest was forbidden to go into that back room. GOD WAS INSIDE… AND EVERYONE ELSE WAS OUTSIDE
God dwelt amongst His people, but they weren’t allowed to get too close to Him! Why? SIN! Sin was a problem for God. He wanted to be close to His people, but their sin made that impossible to allow them to get TOO close.
Even David realized that. He wrote: “No one living is righteous before (God).” (Psalm 148:2) And Romans 3:23 tells us the same thing: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Man’s sin caused a problem for God. Psalm 5:4 says “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.” And Habakkuk 1:13 declared: “(God’s) eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.”
You see… PEOPLE sin. And God couldn’t allow sin in His presence. But (PAUSE) God wanted to be near us. How was He going to fix that? How could God make it so sinful men could get close to Him?
Someone summed it up this way: “Life is short, death is sure; Sin the cause, Christ the cure.”
CHRIST IS THE CURE. Jesus came to remove the sin that kept God away from you (and me). In John 1:29 (John the Baptist) saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! And in 1 Peter 2:24 we’re told that (Jesus) bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”
Jesus died on the cross in order for us to be healed of our sin. And – of course – that’s why John 3:17 is such a powerful passage for us. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son (Jesus) that whosoever would believe in Him should not perish but have might have everlasting life!”
God loved us and gave his only begotten son so that there’d be no separation between Himself & US. Because of Jesus’ death on the cross - when God looks at you - He no longer sees your sin. What God sees is the blood of Jesus that covers your sin. And so NOW - God can spend forever with you. Which is exactly what He wanted from the beginning!
ILLUS: Sometime back I read a question on an internet site called “Quora.com”. Now Quora is basically a site where people ask all kinds of questions and then other people try to answer those questions. There’s all kinds of questions: How do you fix a problem with a car? How do you deal with difficult neighbors? There are political questions; and there are legal questions; and then there are questions about God.
One question asked – “How Do We Explain John 3:16-17”? The first person to answer that question was an atheist by the name of Dick. I always cringe when I see him answering a question about faith because his intention is to destroy the faith of Christians and to attack any thought that God would care for us. So here’s this question about John 3:16-17 and he attacks it with a snide comment that (the passage) teaches that “evil people go to heaven as long as they believe.”
You see what he did there? He belittled the passage by implying that it teaches that the God of the Bible WOULD let EVIL people into heaven. But not Dick - HE would never allow such folks into heaven. In other words: GOD would let EVIL people in but Dick was more righteous than God was! Evil people would never get in on HIS watch!
And so I responded to his comments with these words: “Dick noted that his perception is that John 3:16 teaches ‘that evil people go to heaven as long as they believe.’ Now, that’s kind of a bald way of stating it… yet it’s true. But that doesn’t seem quite right, does it? Evil people should be punished, good people should be rewarded – ERGO, only good people should go to heaven.
But Dick missed the whole point of Jesus’ ministry and the message of Christianity: Jesus said: ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’ (Luke 5:31–32) Jesus spent his time with “tax collectors and sinners” not with the righteous men of the day.
“The repeated theme throughout the New Testament (I wrote) is that ‘ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). Thus, none of us is good enough to be good enough to go to heaven. John 3:16 is basically saying God doesn’t want anyone to perish, but that all should come to repentance… even people like me and Dick.
"You see, Christians should view heaven, not as a right, but as a privilege that we don’t deserve. At our best, followers of Christ should be humble because we know that God’s not impressed with our “self-righteousness” - but He IS impressed with a repentant heart. And because we know that’s true, it’s hard for us to shut up about the love of God - the love of a God who was willing to pay the price for ALL our sins and give hope to the hopeless. That’s the Jesus we serve! Our Jesus is the God of 2nd chances."
That’s why John 3:17 tells us "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Now, that does leave us with one more question: Where … does God dwell NOW? I mean, the tabernacle hasn’t been around for centuries, and there’s no Temple now – that was destroyed in 70 A.D. So… where does God dwell now?
Some people think that God DWELLS in the church building. In fact the Church bldg. is often called “the house of God” because some people think that He’s HERE and that we come on Sundays to spend time with Him.
Now one of the problems with that is this: What do we do when the doors of the church building are locked? Do you just wait until somebody shows up with a key to spend a couple hours with God? No… I don’t think so! Church bldgs. are nice, but that’s NOT where God dwells.
So, does anyone have any idea WHERE God does dwell? That’s right - inside of each believer. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth and said “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
So (if you’re a Christian) YOU are the TEMPLE of God, and inside of YOU is the Holy Spirit. That Holy Spirit is the GLORY of God that has filled your life. God’s GLORY fills you… just like He filled the Tabernacle/Temple. Inside of you is the power and the presence of God.
CLOSE: A few years ago, Jeremy Camp wrote a song entitled “Same Power”. Sing it with me:
“The same power that rose Jesus from the grave; The same power that commands the dead to wake; Lives in us, lives in us. The same power that moves mountains when He speaks; the same power that can calm a raging sea; Lives in us, lives in us; He lives in us, lives in us – He lives in us.”
Now, is THAT what the Bible tells us? Is the same power that raised Jesus from the grave inside of YOU? Is the same power that commands the dead to wake… living in you? Well…Yeah!!!!
Romans 6:10-11. Says “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” God dwells inside of you!
But when did THAT happen? Well that happened when you became a Christian. In Acts 2:38 Peter promised: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
When you made the decision to repent and be baptized into Christ, God filled your life and began to dwell within you… forever! And His Spirit and Power will reside inside of you for eternity.
INVITATION
