1 Kings 6:13, And I will dwell among the sons of Israel, and will not forsake My people Israel." 
 	We are brought face to face with a most tremendous reality and promise of God within this passage that has become ever more glorious as the ages have passed since it was first voiced. And lest we think that it was only to Solomon that this promise of the immutable Lord God Almighty was given, we need to go all the way back to after the Children of Israel were released from their bondage in Egypt by the mighty power and provision of the eternal Godhead in action. It was there, at Mount Sinai, when God was meeting with Moses on behalf of the freed people of His choosing, that Jehovah set before them the promise that is further delineated in our morning’s passage.
	Ex 25:8, And let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them. God instructed the people as to exactly what was necessary in order for the Creator of the Universe, the Only True and Living, Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnipresent Lord God Almighty to so set His Honor and His Majesty before His people in the terms of abiding among them, within the Holy of Holies. 
That Yahweh would so deign to live within the confines of a manmade structure is beyond all human understanding and comprehension of the magnitude of this freely offered divine acquiescence unto His very own created beings. Consider what it meant for God to have His earthly habitation within the imperfect structure of a dwelling place made even by the finest of artisans with all their manifest genius. 
Nothing manmade can contain the full measure of the Godhead. Not a tent - not a temple - not a country - not a planet - not even the expanding universe! It is all too small and too limiting for the magnitude of even the smallest measure of the Divine Creator of everything. But God, out of the greatness of His Love and His Grace and His Mercy set before humanity the reality that He would choose to dwell in the midst of His people as they would so learn to honor and to obey and to trust Him as their Everything.
	He has chosen to be in that close and living relationship with such as we are, for no other reason than it would bring greatest pleasure and satisfaction and enjoyment and blessing within the entirety of His divine spiritual realm. We dare never speak for God nor give human voice to His intentions. His plans and His purposes and His work are so far beyond the scope of such as human mind or concepts! However, in the carrying forth of His very own Words spoken through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we have some aspects of what He would choose to reveal in the course of His given Word. 
	These passages put forth that of which our human minds can merely perceive and grasp at the focal edges of the grand reality of Who God is and all that He has done! He will accomplish everything that will ever bring glory and honor and adoration and praise to His awesome and Holy and Righteous and Eternal name. Blessed be the God of our salvation and our redemption Who has so chosen to delight Himself in the midst of the assemblage of His redeemed people! 
We are a portion of the people whom He has redeemed unto Himself, through the manifold giving of The Only Begotten of the Father. He died for our sins, and then was raised in the glorious resurrection on that third day, bringing us up with Him into an adoption into the very family of God on High. 
As well, in Jesus Christ, not only were the Hebrew people brought into this intimate and personal living relationship, but any man, woman, or child, who will call upon His glorious and awesome name with the belief upon Him as the resurrected Son of God through the pre-salvation ministry of the Holy Spirit, will be brought into this manifest truth of becoming the living temple of the Most High God.
	The promises made to the nation of Israel, all those centuries ago are now ours in Jesus Christ! Consider what we can hold onto in the magnificence of God Almighty as was voiced in Lev 26:11+12. 
	Lev 26:11+12, 'Moreover, I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul will not reject you. 'I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people. 
	Consider this in the context of what it means to now be adopted into the very people of God among whom He will walk and be our God and we are made to be His people! This takes on far more significance in the reality that wherever we may tread on this earth, God is with us! He is walking with us and communing with us through the incomprehensible fullness of indwelling our hearts and minds. The altogether awesome and glorious Creator of all that is made now lives with and in us manifesting the complete magnitude of His Grace and Mercy and Power and Love. 
	He deigns to become our Everything in all the magnificence of His Omniscience and His Omnipresence and His Omnipotence. This goes beyond the idea that is so often set forth that we walk with God and that He will carry us when our feet are tired or the path becomes too difficult or the storms are too severe. He is so much greater and grander and more glorious than just meagerly picking us up when life gets too hard for our efforts to and our energy to handle!
	In 1 Kings 8:26+27, Solomon gave voice to this utter astonishment that God would so choose to indwell the physical house that was constructed, and we bring this forward into the earthly, living home of our hearts which God so delights to personally indwell. It is an absolutely amazing aspect of God that He would be so willing to come into His creation in such a manner as to express His Holiness, and His Righteousness, and His Sovereignty, and His Love in means which would meet our every need, in such a physical representation of His indwelling power and might and presence! 
	1 Kings 8:26+27, "Now therefore, O God of Israel, let Thy word, I pray Thee, be confirmed which Thou hast spoken to Thy servant, my father David. "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Thee, how much less this house which I have built! 
	Rather, the reality is that He works so marvelously through everything that He brings into our lives for the purpose of shaping and fitting and developing a relationship that transcends any earthly idea of being merely carried during difficult times. He is there, effectively and manifestly dealing with the inner struggles which bring forth the death to self that the life of Jesus Christ will be the more ever increasing response of our beings when we encounter those for whom the chaos of this age is overwhelming and critically damning. 
	A major reason for the ceaseless activity of God to reveal and to cleanse the residue of our old, dead, nature with all those fiery tentacles that are embedded into the depths of our beings, is that He is using us, His people, as the means of bringing forth more and more of His good and merciful work in the lives of those who are in such desperate need. It is not about us and making our lives better and less stressed. It is about our being those living witnesses of the risen Lord Jesus Christ Who wants to meet the imperative needs of those who have no other means of hope or rescue from the twisting, churning, foaming caldrons of the power of this age. 
	Rather than the focus being upon what we get and how well provisioned we are to face the wakes and the recesses of our societal mal-absorption, we are the visible evidence to those who are drowning, those who are being eaten alive, those who are becoming the fuel of this age’s vitriol and blasphemous accusations and delusions. 
In the power of God, because of His indwelling essence of love and grace and mercy, we become those men and women who see and hear the ze’akah surrounding us. Through the active ministry of The Holy Spirit, we are His means of reaching into the chaos and pulling out those whom the Lord frees from such distressed and frenzied strife. 
	What needs to be recognized by me, by you, by the church of God on this earth, is that we are here, not for ourselves, but for the reason of God to show, through the living sacrifice of our lives, that Jesus Christ is truly the Lord of lords and the King of kings! It is the church that stands forth in the fiery and awful blazes of accusations and lies and assaults of this defiled and deceived world as the principle example of the Lordship of God over all of His creation! Through the power of the Holy Spirit, in absolute line with the Word of God, the church is the focal reality of the Light of Jesus Christ. 
	That is why God told His people, and tells us, in Num 35:34, that we must not defile the land in which He places us. It is to be the place where His shalom reigns as the witness that there is a much better and much more wonderful place of righteousness, peace, and joy for those who will but turn to God and receive His free gift of salvation.
	Num 35:34, 'And you shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord am dwelling in the midst of the sons of Israel.'" 
	This reverence must be with consideration of the fact that wherever we go, wherever we live, wherever we work, wherever we vacation, wherever we visit, God is there in us and seen through us. We must be ever diligent in the manner in which we are representatives of the Lordship of Jesus in our lives and in the lives of each who belong to Him. We are ambassadors in this fallen realm to the fact that the Love of God is freely available to all who are willing to open their hearts to the truth that He came to this earth to express the pure and perfect love of God in adopting such as we are into His very family. That requires an utmost dedication and commitment to be the holy and righteous bringers of His love to those who are the unloved, the despised, the refuse, the dregs, the lost, the discarded, and the considered worthless of this age. 
	Consider how the Psalmist relates this truth in Ps 68:18+19. There was already in evidence the fact that God has a heart for those who are so imprisoned by this present realm. No matter what the circumstance, no matter what the social relationship, no matter what the financial situation, nothing matters to the working power of God except the heart that is crying out in utmost ze’akah. 
	Ps 68:18+19, Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captive Thy captives; Thou hast received gifts among men, Even among the rebellious also, that the Lord God may dwell there. Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, The God who is our salvation. Selah. 
	Note that God not only chose to live here with His people, with us, but He chose to bear our burdens. This is another of those tremendous aspects of God’s nature and promise which just defies human understanding. How can the Omnipotent Lord God, Creator of Heaven and earth, bear any burden? 
Nothing is beyond Him. Nothing has a hold on Him? There is no element of this age which can in any wise hinder or set a claim upon or enslave Him! He is above it all with no manner of hindrance of His perfection in operation to do all that He has ordained to be done from before He set the ages of eternity into place! And yet, He willingly chooses to bear our burdens as He lifts us out of the drudgery of our enslavement to this realm! He sets us free in His great and manifested love! 
Such is the heart and the will of God in full function as He makes Himself to be the expression of Truth and Righteousness and Holiness and Perfect Love abounding to those whom He has adopted unto Himself. Praise and worship and glory and honor to the Lord God - Almighty and Awesome beyond measure!
	The Psalmist then continues for us in Ps 132:12-14, with the reality that this has been the plan of God with the creation of humanity from the beginning. This entire truth of the indwelling of those who are the redeemed of The Lord with the full essence of the Godhead is an amazing and majestic truth of the Love of God in action! 
	Ps 132:12-14, "If your sons will keep My covenant, And My testimony which I will teach them, Their sons also shall sit upon your throne forever." For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His habitation. "This is My resting place forever; Here I will dwell, for I have desired it. 
	It is something that He has desired to bring into place in order to have such a relationship with the very creatures that He has put on the face of the earth. I need to be very clear at this point, before we continue on in our next time together in consideration of this passage. We are not becoming gods unto ourselves. That was the lie that enticed man in the Garden. There was that tickling of the human inclination to become a god, ruling over the every moment of our short walk on this earth. 
	We are the vessels through whom The Only Living True Lord God Almighty has the freedom to bring His shalom, His peace, His harmony, His perfect will unto the people who are so enslaved by the lies and the forces of this darkened age. It is ever God at work as we trust Him and obey Him in going where He sends us. We speak His Word to those whom He brings into our obedient walk before Him. It is all God and none of us in any measure whatsoever! 
That needs to be so very clear because there are those teachings within the various churches and gatherings of Christians which allude to us becoming as little gods. It is the lie of the prosperity teaching of people making vast sums of money and tremendous differences through the works that we will do in the course of becoming little gods before mankind. That is utter anathema to the truth of Who Jesus is and all that He has accomplished. 
We are never going to be as God in any manner whatsoever! We will always be His creation, utterly and fully dependent upon Him to meet our every need as He so meets the needs of everyone who turns to Him and seeks to know Him in fullness and in truth! So be it!
And I will dwell among the sons of Israel, and will not forsake My people Israel." Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is 1 Peter 5:6+7. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. Amen.