Whenever Moses went into the Tabernacle to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim above the Ark’s cover—the place of atonement—that rests on the Ark of the Covenant. The LORD spoke to him from there. (Numbers 7:89)It is hard to imagine a place, a physical place where God dwells. 1 Corinthians 2 tells us that God is in our hearts, that we are the temple. That is the whole idea of the New Testament, that God lives within us.
Jesus even gave that whole idea of change when he told the woman in John 4, God does not live in a temple made with hands.
She wanted to know of the place where she could go and see God, talk to God, experience God in a physical way. Jesus said, God is not physical that he can be contained within anything. He is Spirit.
In the Old Testament, however, it was different. God lived in the Holy of Holies, in the tabernacle at first, then in the temple. The people of Israel were even warned not to go too close to the tabernacle or they would die. That was God’s dwelling place.
In fact, Numbers says that God’s actual dwelling place, the place you could go if you wanted to see the actual presence of God, was between the two cherubim on top of the ark of the covenant.
Of course, you couldn’t do that. Only one man, the High Priest could do that. And he only once a year. When the Israelites moved about, as they did for forty years, living a nomadic life, that one man even had to cover the ark so that no one else could see it.
It was the presence of God.
But not now. When Jesus died, Mark 15:38 says: the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. It was God saying, no more will I live somewhere. Now, he says, I will live in you.
We don’t go to church to see God. We do not go to holy places or say holy things to invoke him. If we are his, he lives in our hearts. His earthly physical presence is in us, not in places.
No matter how good the church building may feel, or how you may hold it in reverence, it is not holy. You are holy. By your presence, you make it holy when you bring God with you. And by your presence, and him in you, your home is holy, your workplace is holy, your car is holy, you are holy.
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