A House for the Creator

March 28

(Acts 7:44-50 NIV) ""Our forefathers had the tabernacle of the Testimony with them in the desert. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. {45} Having received the tabernacle, our fathers under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, {46} who enjoyed God's favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. {47} But it was Solomon who built the house for him. {48} "However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says: {49} "'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord. Or where will my resting place be? {50} Has not my hand made all these things?'"

(Psalms 139:7-16 NIV) ““Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? {8} If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. {9} If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, {10} even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. {11} If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," {12} even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. {13} For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. {14} I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. {15} My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, {16} your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.””

(1 Corinthians 3:16 NIV) "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?"

How do you build a house for a God who is omnipresent? How can a structure made by human hands possibly hold the Creator of those hands? No temple made by man can contain God. The religionists that Stephen addressed had become proud and arrogant. They thought their theology could contain the God of the universe. They believed their laws were the summation of God’s nature, and that their piety made them godlike. They should have known that, even though God instructed Moses in the building of the tabernacle, and Solomon in the construction of the temple, no man made structure can contain a God who is infinite and eternal. The only temple that God lives in is one that He made. God lives in His creation -- in you and me. When we come to faith, Christ comes to live in us. If we believe God, we become God’s temple. Take care of that temple. -- Friar Tuck’s Word of the Day