open in your Bibles to 1 Kings chapter 8. 1 Kings chapter 8. It's a long chapter. As much as I don't like doing this, and we've done it for the last couple because of how the series is going, I'm not going to read the whole thing. It takes about 15 minutes. So I'm going to read a little bit from the beginning, a little bit from the middle, a little bit from the end. So I'll announce them as we follow through. I'm going to read the passage and pray and write a sermon And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the ark, and they brought up the ark of the Lord, the tent of meeting, all the holy vessels that were in the tent. The priests and the Levites brought them up. And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel who had assembled before him were with him before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered. And the priest brought the ark place of the ark, so that the cherubim overshadowed the ark and its poles. And the poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place before the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from the outside. And they were there to this day. There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses put there at Bered, where the Lord made a covenant with the people of Israel when they came out of the land of Egypt. When the priest came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priest could not stand and minister. Because of the cloud, the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Jumping over to verse 22, Then Solomon stood before O lord, god of Israel, there is no god like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their hearts. You have kept with your servant David, my father, when you declared to him, you spoke with your mouth and with your hand have fulfilled it this day. Now, therefore, O lord, god of Israel, keep for your servant sit before me on the throne of Israel, if only your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me. Now therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you have spoken to your servant David, my father. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Yet, have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord, my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you have said, my name shall be there, that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers for this place, and listen to the plea of your servant and your people Israel when they pray toward this place, and listen in heaven, your dwelling place, And when you hear, forget." leave us, or forsake us, that he may incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his rules, which he commanded our fathers. Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God, day and night. May he maintain the cause of his servant, and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God, there is no other. Let your heart, therefore, be wholly true to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments as at this day. Thus ends the reading of God's holy, inerrant word. May its truth be ever written upon our hearts. Let us pray. yourself. Be present with us as you were on the day the temple was consecrated. Help us to see you in this text and to find ourselves in you. We pray this for our good and your glory. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so today is the third Sunday of Advent. Does anyone kind of remember what Advent means? Advent means the coming of an arrival. Have you ever ordered something online and you get a tracking number so that you can click and see where the package is in the shipment process? That's kind of like what Advent is. Just like you would click on the tracking number and you would track the process of Advent, we track the coming of God into the world. You see, 2,000 years ago, God entered this world in the person of Jesus in order to redeem us and restore us to himself. And over the last few weeks of Advent, we've been working through this idea of God with us, Emmanuel. If you're visiting or you've just been checking this out, normally my habit is to go verse by verse through books or sections of the Bible. But for Advent this year, we're jumping around a little bit, because we're tracing this theme in a few key passages of scripture. If you were here two weeks ago, we talked about how God was with us in the garden, the garden of Eden. And we looked at how God made us to be with him, according to Genesis 1 and 2. then sin got in the way. And sin separates us from God. That's what we see in Genesis 3. And pretty much the whole rest of the Bible, God is trying to make a way to fix that. God is trying to make a way to be with His people again. So, we can consider that first week kind of like getting the email that your shipment about how God was with us in the tabernacle. We saw this in Exodus. After God brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, he gave them the law, the Ten Commandments, on Mount Sinai, also called Pharaoh, that's in 4th and 5th passage. And then, in Exodus 25-34, God gives Moses very specific instructions on the design of the tabernacle, so that he could dwell with his people. And then throughout the rest of Exodus, Moses and the Israelites make the tabernacle. And at the very end of Exodus, the spirit of God descends upon the tabernacle like a cloud. And God's presence, God's glory fills the tabernacle. And so if week one is a little bit like getting the letter saying, hey, your thing's out of the company and it's gonna ship it, week two in Exodus is like saying it's in transit. the tabernacle is a tent, it moves with the people. And so for about 450 years, the tabernacle was the place where the Israelites would meet with God in the Old Testament. The tabernacle would move with them during their 40 years wandering the wilderness. And when Joshua leads the people over the promised land, they place the tabernacle in Shiloh, according to tabernacle in Shiloh again. It's not really mentioned between the two, which leads me to assume that the tabernacle was not moved during the days of the judges. But when David becomes king, he takes up residence in the royal palace of Saul. And when he moves in, he looks up and it says in 2 Samuel 7, So, King David, a little bit before what we read in 1 Kings, moves into a palace and he looks around and he's like, I get to live in this beautiful house of cedar while my God dwells in a tent. And it goes on to his heart for wanting to build the temple. It is good for you to look around at all the good things you have and say, my God deserves more. My God deserves more than I have. He looked at his house and he's like, my God is dwelling in a tent. He deserves more than I do. And so he wanted to build a house. But if you remember 2 Samuel 7, God tells David that he will not build a house, but he promises David that one of his sons will sit on the throne. that David lays out in 1 Chronicles, and he builds a house for God, a temple for the almighty creator of the universe, and if you go back and read chapters 6 and 7, it sounds an awful lot like the tabernacle design laid out in the book Nexus that we talked about last week. You see there's menorahs made of bronze and covered and the etchings are covered with pure gold, so that if you walked into the Holy of Holies, it would look like a golden garden, like Eden. You see, there is something about Eden, God's original design for the world, that was recaptured. For the Israelites coming in, for the high priests who get to enter the Holy of Holies, it was supposed to remind them of God with us in the very the priest carried the Ark of the Covenant into the temple. The Ark of the Covenant is just a big box-like thing that they put the King Commandments in. You can think of Indiana Jones if you want. Now, they carried this thing into the temple, and as the priest would leave, look at what it says. This is chapter eight, verses nine. There was nothing in the Ark except the two tablets, a stone that Moses When the priest came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priest could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord." If you were with us last week, this should sound rather familiar because this sounds an awful lot like the end of Exodus. in the temple. And so that is what the temple is. The temple is the permanent dwelling place of God on the earth, or at least that's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be the permanent dwelling place of God on earth. But wait a minute. Isn't God in heaven? Similarly, isn't God everywhere? Well, yes. So how can God then dwell in the temple? How can he stay in the temple if he's actually in heaven, or if he's actually in heaven? That's the same question Solomon has in verse 27. You see, in verse 27, Solomon says, but will God indeed dwell in earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I am building. He recognizes that this temple that he built cannot hold God, so he prays. have regard for the prayer of your servant, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house. Verse 30, listen to the plea of your servant and of your people when they pray toward this place, and listen to heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive. This becomes a theme through the next number of verses, that God in heaven is to listen or see what's happening in the temple. You see, Solomon knows that God ultimately dwells in heaven eternally, that no home or tabernacle or temple can contain the fullness of God, no matter how big or nice it is. But he asked God to make his place, the temple, special, to make it unique, so that his eyes, so that God's eyes in heaven would be on this place day and night. especially. That in the temple, God will uniquely see what's happening with men, and that men in the temple will uniquely experience what's happening with God in heaven. It's a place where God in heaven and man on earth intersect. Here's a weird way to think about it, and I couldn't come up with a better illustration, so take this with a grain of salt, but have you ever seen one of those They put a stand in the water, they put an aquarium upside down, then they backfill it with water, and then the fish in the pond can swim up into the aquarium and you can stand on the shore and see the fish coming up out of the water. It's kind of cool. It's really weird. You've probably never seen it. like earth, like the physical world, and the space outside the pond like heaven, then the temple is that little upside-down crayon where the fish can go in and out, and God can see them more clearly, more uniquely, than anywhere else. You see, the temple is meant to be a unique place where God in heaven and people on earth intersect, where God and people So, through the next few hundred years of Israel's history, us as He was with our fathers, may He not leave us or forsake us. God, please dwell with us. May God dwell with us. May He come be with us. Verse 58, that He, that God, may incline our hearts to Him, to walk in His ways, and keep His commandments, His statutes, and His laws, which He commanded to our fathers. You see, what Solomon is supposed to see us and come be with us so that we can choose to be with Him. He inclines Himself to us so that we may incline our hearts to Him. Brothers and sisters, remember it is sin that ultimately separates us from God. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago in Genesis 3. Because of the fall, we are all far from God. We often want nothing to do with Him in our lives. And so if we have any hope to come back to God, it must be because God comes to us first. That it is God who saves us. And so God comes to us so that we might choose, so that we can choose to come to him. That's what he does for us in Jesus. In Jesus, the eternal God of the universe entered the world to be with people. and He lived the life you were always supposed to, and He died on a cross, and He rose from the grave, forgiving sin, conquering the powers of sin and death, conquering everything that separates us from God, so that He, so that God, could bring us back to God. God chooses us. Kings and verses 1 through 26 we see that God chooses to dwell with us in the temple. And how does God choose to come to people? How does God choose to come to people? In verses 1 David. The promise he made to David. God chooses to dwell in the temple because of the covenant with Moses and because of the promise with David. You see this highlighted throughout verses 22 through 26 as well. Verse 23, O LORD God of Israel, there is no God like you, Word of God, He reveals Himself to us lost sinners. There is something about the Scriptures which gives us a direct access, a direct insight into the very presence of God. It is in the Scriptures that we come face to face with the Almighty. That we might believe the Scriptures, like Moses, shining with the glory of God. God chooses to dwell with His people through covenants, The temple isn't just a place for God to dwell with his people, but for people to come to God. God chooses to dwell with his people, and they can then choose to come to him. He chooses to dwell with his people so people can come to him. Solomon prays that this will be the case, that people will come to God in the temple. In verses 27 through 53, Solomon continues the prayer he's already begun. And look at just some of the things he highlights here. Verse 31, if a man sins and makes an oath, verse 32, condemn the guilty and vindicate the righteous. If people sin and repent, condemn the guilty, vindicate the righteous. When your people are defeated because of their sin, if they repent, verse 33, turn against you in prayer, in repenting. You see, throughout this prayer, we see that people can come to God through prayer and repentance. We can come to God by prayer and repentance. That's what the Temple is for. The Temple is called a house of prayer. It is a place where people of every nation, tribe, and tongue can come and pray to God. And God in heaven will hear them on earth. It is also the place of atonement, the place where sacrifices were made for sin. It is the place where people would come to bring their sacrifices, to have them slaughtered, so that they could be made right with God, so that they could be forgiven. people can come to be with God by prayer and by repentance. But the fact that God chooses to dwell there is not something He had to do, which means it was not something that would have to remain forever. The New Dictionary of Biblical Theology says this in guaranteed, as God had chosen to dwell there so he could leave it if his people disobeyed him." And so, as you keep reading the Old Testament history, you find that the Israelites over and over and over again disobeyed God and rejected God. And eventually, after hundreds of years, God chooses to remove His Spirit from the Temple and lets the Babylonians come in So, the Israelites never lost hope in the promise that God would dwell with them forever. That is the thing that they held onto throughout exile. And as soon as the Israelites got back into the promised land after exile, they started building the temple again. You might remember this from a couple years back when we went through the book of Ezra. They were rebuilding the temple. And then, They thought God would be with them. But little did they know that God had something much greater coming. That God was actually planning to dwell physically with His people in the person of Jesus. And upon that, Jesus showed three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples rebuilt the temple, so too, God dwelled with the Israelites 2,000 years ago in the person of Jesus and he was destroyed, he was killed, and he was rebuilt in the resurrection. And God then dwells with his people forever. So, what does the resurrection do here? It brings forgiveness, it makes a way for God to dwell with his people, for God to dwell with you. Just like the Old Testament people can come to God through repentance and prayer in the temple, so too, those of us in Jesus Christ can draw near to God through repentance and prayer. Jesus, being the sacrifice that makes us right with God, has a once-for-all, completed finish, offer of forgiveness. So that if you come to God in repentance, you are already forgiven. Jesus being the great high priest, our great mediator, is bringing our prayers to the father as we speak. He is speaking to God the things we pray to him. And Jesus, dear brothers and sisters, you have direct access to God. God chooses to be with you so that you can choose to be with him. When you believe in him, you are united to him. If Jesus is the temple, then you are united to the temple. If you remember our call to worship from Ephesians 2 this morning, it says that we are being built together into a temple of the Lord. Dear brothers and sisters, together, not as individual Christians, but as people filled with the Spirit, we become together the dwelling place for God amongst men. And just like people of all nations could look to the temple as a place to see God, people in our community can look to us as a place to see Christ. Through our love for one another, through our prayer, through our repentance. He chose to dwell with us so that we might choose to dwell with Him. And in Christ, He makes a way that we can dwell with Him forever. Have you chosen to dwell with God? Have you chosen to be a temple where the Spirit of God dwells in you, so that everyone around It's about the coming of God into the world. About how he'll come all the more in Jesus Christ. Amen? That's right. Dear God, we thank you that you came into this world. You made yourself known in the days of old, in the temple. Lord, we thank you that you ultimately make yourself known to us in Jesus Christ. Help us to turn our hearts to him, to love him more, to know him more completely. We lift up this time. When we go out and worship him, repent him, and pray. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord. Amen.