1 - THEY WILL BE MY HOME = “I WILL LIVE AND WALK AMONG THEM”
2 Corinthians? ?6?:?14?-?18? ?NIV??
14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.””
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May God add a blessing to the reading of His Word.
Thanks be to God!
I worked at TimberLee Christian Center, a huge Christian camp in East Troy, WI in the summer of 1990. There were a few international students who were working there that summer as well and one of the girls was from Germany. When she prayed, she couldn’t speak English very well, so she would just pray in German. I understood Danke, Jesus. One evening she was fixated on an English word and shared with how the sound of the word also communicated to her the actual feeling of the word. And she kept saying it over and over again and it made her smile. Do you want to know what the word was? HOME.
How does the word HOME make you feel? Perhaps you have a favorite out-fit you like to be comfortable in - pair of warm slippers, a Snuggie, fireplace, smell of pie or wassail. HOME. How many of you would say you have good memories of that word, HOME?
John 14:23 Jesus said,, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our HOME with them.
When Jesus looks at your heart, does he say, Home. Home. Home.
When I was kid one of my favorite things to do was to spend the night at a friend’s HOME. Sometimes they were friends of believing parents and sometimes they weren’t. The most favorite thing to do was on a Sunday, to go over to my friend’s house after church, spend the day with him. And since we had Sunday evening church, I would come back with his family and then ride back home with mine. It was a win-win situation because it got me to church on Sunday nights.
It was at my friend’s house that I learned that not all Christian families were the same. I am not sure why I thought that they were. I knew my relatives homes were different than my family mostly because they didn’t go to church, but another church family? Surely it should be the same, right?
I have this distinct memory of discovering a cruel invention and what they must have served in prisons camps something called “Instant mashed potatoes.” You know how young people can be honest - rude, but honest? We all sat together at their table –like we did at home, had a table spread for Sunday dinner, like we did, and had prayer and then passed the bowls and platters of food. OH, THIS family allowed you to have soda pop with their Sunday dinner! That was an abomination in my home. But as they passed the meat, and veggies,, and rolls, gravy, I took a bite of what was supposed to be mashed potatoes and once I savored and swallowed it– I was quite rude–I said, WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE MASHED POTATOES? There was a lot of clamor until the mom said, It must be because they are instant. I said, “What do you mean, “instant?” My friend said, They are from a box. I thought he was lying and argued with him until he brought me over the red box of instant mashed potatoes, and right then and there I learned something: Not all families are the same. Some are fake. Some make fake mashed potatoes that tasted like old communion wafers and this family learned to like them. I guess if that’s all you ever knew and you put a lot of good gravy on it and I mean a lot of good gravy. TO me, it just felt like compromise.
But I wouldn’t have learned about other families being different than my own, nor what set my family apart–of the things I liked about my family, and things I liked about other families that I would bring into my own family and HOME some day.
When my wife and I were dating, she would drive up she would spend the night at my Pastor's house. And each Saturday night we would spend time with them for supper and just before the kids would go to bed they would have what they called FAMILY TIME. They were very young and so that was a children’s bible story, a sharing of one thing they thanked God for that day, and a prayer. And after a brush/flush time, hugs and kisses, they were sent to bed. We left their home saying, I WANT TO DO THAT. I want to do in my family what they do in THAT family. I am 50/50 on pop at the dinner table for meal times, but THAT I am 100% about. And for 25+ years, we have had family time almost every night so 300+ times each year.
Are HOMES of families who pray together different than those that do not? Should homes where families who TRUST the Lord, LOVE the Lord, look different than those that do not? Than those who serve instant mashed potatoes? In Lev. 26 verse 12 we read of the promise God made to His people Paul repeats in his 2nd letter to the Corinthian church. “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.”
The rest of Lev 26, God teaches Moses and his people that if they would but trust HIM and follow his ways, they would be blessed, so much so that in verses 10 he says You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. And then comes the promise Paul reminds the church:
v11 - I will put my dwelling place among you
What is a dwelling? It is a HOME = the dwelling place for Israel was the Temple, and when THE presence of God was dwelling in the temple, it was called the Shekinah Glory - you KNEW when God was visiting the Temple with His Special presence, there was an awesome cloud and bright glorious light. And Moses would walk right on it to that glory.
God promise to be with his people is repeated several different times and in different ways. How can God never leave his people? Since Jesus Christ died and rose again God never leaves His people because God dwells not just “among” believers, but WITHIN them. The word “Dwelling” is not a pitch a tent kind of staying like a nomad. No, it is making his HOME WITHIN YOU.
John 14:23 - Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our HOME with them.
Do you want God to look at YOU and say, with that one, I am HOME.
Ephesians 2:22 - And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Do you want God to look at our church and say, HOME! ?
So many people have Rev 3:20 memorized
And Rev 3:20, Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
What door is Jesus talking about? Do you remember that old painting of Jesus standing outside of a door with his one hand knocking and his face turned toward the viewer? Did you ever notice in that painting there is no door knob. TO be opened it must be done from the inside. Isn’t it beautiful that Jesus still wants to come into people’s hearts today! Is He knocking on your heart’s door? If he is, will you open your heart and let Him so he can … make His HOME within you?
He promised to do just that.
WHEN the Lord God brought his people out of Egypt HE broke the bars of their yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
The description in Leviticus of the blessings of God are the difference between the people of the LORD God and those who worship idols of any kind.
“The bars of your yoke” is the heavy crosspiece resting on an oxen’s back, forcing it to pull a heavy load.
God not only freed his people from Egypt; he causes them to “walk upright.” Slaves are bent over under the heavy burdens they must bear. But Yahweh GOD will heal the stoop produced by the heavy loads they carried while enslaved to the Egyptians.
HAVE YOU BEEN FEELING BURDENED? BEATEN DOWN? ENSLAVED TO SINS AND PATTERNS THAT HOLD YOU BACK? Not only will JESUS ease your burden; he will give you dignity so that you may walk upright with confidence.
But the Yoke must be broken.
Yoke? Where have I heard that word before? Oh yes, 2 Cor 6:14, Do NOT be yoked together with unbelievers. There is a direct connection here between the yoke of slavery of Egypt and what the Corinthian church-family choosing to be yoked with unbelievers.
And you can only be yoked to one and so who is that one going to be? The only one it should be.
Matt 11:29-30, Jesus says “Take MY YOKE upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find REST unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
Jesus promises to make your heart his home, if you come.
“WILL BE MY HOME” = “I WILL LIVE AND WALK AMONG THEM”
Are you yoked with God? Is your heart His today? Have you given up everything for trusting in the Lord?
Will you trust him all the way to the end? Jesus spoke of our final home this way, in John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way… HOME. THEY WILL BE MY HOME for I have promised “I WILL LIVE with them AND WALK AMONG them”
Would you pray and RESPOND to Jesus. Tell him, Come HOME.
