The Wandering: Divine Residence
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Intro
The Place
The Place
What do you want with the person you love the most? Is it not to be with them?
Come what may whether success or failure, joy or pain, the one thing that I can’t imagine is experiencing any of those things with the people that I love most.
Is it any wonder then that God is no different…having created, destroyed, judged, etc. out of all of creation the thing that loved most was mankind
Genesis 1 & 2 make it clear that God desired and designed a personal relationship with man. Sin corrupted that but didn’t eradicate all possibility of it.
The first attempt at restoring that formally with a group of people was with Israel…the Hebrews. The promised children of Abraham.
In Exodus 19 and 20 we see this first chance at that…God has delivered His people from Israel and wants to be with them
He warns them not to come too close but He will come down to them and speak to them.
Yet the people were afraid.
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.
Because of this first he had Moses and then the priests that would go before the people and be intercessors between them and God
However, His desire was still the same…to be amongst His people
Where do you desire to be…truly?
What would being there feel like?
The Israelites wanted to be EVERYWHERE but with Yahweh…He was a means to an end for them but to Him…they were the end...
So He commanded the people to build Him a tabernacle to dwell in and it wasn’t fancy...
Then 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. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.
I remember when my wife and I first got married how little we had. We had a bed and box springs…no bed frame, her 6 inch tv screen from college that I think my iPhone is bigger than, dishes that were given from the wedding, donating couch that smelled like smoke, and paid first months rent with donations from others at the wedding. We both had raggedy cars that barely ran…and here we thought we were rich lol but it didn’t matter because we were near.
See from the beginning God wanted to be amongst His people…whether it be from the Garden of Eden or the Israelites…the idea was not just habitation but intimacy.
TR: Well that wasn’t good enough for Him because sin was still standing between us and Him so He dwelt among us again....but this time in flesh...
The Person
The Person
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
So instead of their being a place of God…there was the person of God…Jesus Christ.
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
and further
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
Sound familiar? Just as the Israelites could pray to a God that they didn’t know and fear a God that THEY had in fact called out to so too does this world not know it’s God and fear His presence...
Yet God is consistently coming TOO mankind
See what the Israelites missed in all of their wandering, wars, and chaos was that the most valuable thing there was was to be in the presence of God.
He wanted to be amongst them and that was His ends
looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
It was joyous for him to endure the cross SO THAT He could be near us.
I look back on the people that I’ve lost this year and think of how much I’d like to be near them. How seeing them in the flesh and how much they loved me and I them was an expression of God Himself. How Bob would have a story for EVERY meeting lol The meetings didn’t have to last 4 hours but Bob pulled out stories from 1955 on you and what choice did you have.
See in the New Testament, the Israelites hadn’t really progressed much from their 40 years in the wilderness. Yeah they had officially become a nation but only to be conquered again.
They’re still waiting on the presence of God to be amongst them but they still saw him as a means to an end...
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
They were so concerned with their country, their prosperity, their well being, that they didn’t see that the blessing was actually the PRESENCE OF GOD
Here you had God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, Yeshua, their Messiah, and they were concerned about a nation.
One of the things that I know that I’ve battled to not lose during this wandering is that the most precious thing to me is the presence of God…not relief, not prosperity, health, etc. because all of those things come and go.
Not to be morbid but this life continues to teach me that everything thing I see is passing away…the question is where do I want to be?
Adam desired to be with Eve more so than with God apparently…Israel desired to be in the promised land…NT Israel desired to be free...
Yet all the while…all God desired was THEM....so much so that he left the throne, took upon flesh to be with them.
TR: But here’s the thing that’s most amazing…even with God walking amongst them He couldn’t FULLY be with them…they still wrestled with deadness...
The People
The People
Even better than a place, or a person, there was finally the people of God...
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.
Do you see…what is better than having Jesus with us is God IN US through the power of His Holy Spirit...
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
So the Spirit of God, rather than hovering over the surface of the deep like Genesis 1, displaying God’s terrifying glory like with the Israelites, or fully indwelling Jesus Christ…made His people alive with Him and dwells within them.
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
See, the God of Heaven desires to dwell with you so much that He has placed Himself inside of each and every believer…what’s crazy is that reality has grown old
TELL US SOMETHING NEW PASTOR! SAY SOMETHING DEEP PASTOR!!! The deepest thing I know is that somehow and for some reason beyond me…God dwells within this flesh and desires my eternal company.
As we’re wandering in this wilderness we call life, suffering the consequence of sin, the consequence of a fallen world, let us not lose sight of this GREAT TRUTH
GOD DWELLS, not just AMONGST, but WITHIN MANKIND THROUGH THE POWER OF HIS SPIRIT!!!
God’s divine residence is not exclusively EXTERNAL but INTERNAL...
Not to make us God but to enable us to be NEAR TO HIM.
Where Israel stood at the base of the mountain terrified, we are commanded to draw near....
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
and
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
FAMILY…GOD IS WITH YOU!
Take heart in these times, no matter what your circumstance may be
I’m tired of the cliches, deep discoveries, or eloquent speeches…the simple fact is God loves man and desires to dwell with Him…when you know who you are that’ll simultaneously be terrifying and encouraging..
God’s consistent pursuit has been intimate habitation with His people…to Him there is nothing more glorious
To know that we have that now spiritually and one day physically should overwhelm us
So I ask you today, to make this truth impactful in your life, desire it more than anything else, meditate on it and share the Gospel so that others can partake in it.