“They shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.”

This is the heart of God! This is the promise and hope that is set before the people of Israel time and again as he gives them his covenants, laws, and provisions for a relationship with him. Did God not originally create the garden of Eden to dwell with he people, to walk and talk with them in the cool of the garden as they abided in his rest? Sin entered the world, the abiding ceased, and humanity was cast out of the garden.

The drive of all that God reveals to us is his ardent desire to be present with his beloved creation! In Colossians 1 it is written that all things were created through Christ and for Christ, and that in him the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, that through him he might reconcile to himself all things. All things! The cry of God’s heart is heard over and over; he wants complete reconciliation with his creation that he might be present with us, his people.

In I Peter it is written that we are living stones, being built up into a dwelling place for God founded on the corner stone of Christ Jesus himself! This is the mystery that is spoken of in the book of James when he writes that in Christ the walls of division are broken down to make one people for himself. He makes peace by his blood, again, Colossians 1, and this peace is a dwelling place built for himself…out of us!!

The mystery is that we are miserable sinners, divided and at odds with God (Romans 2) but that by his blood we are redeemed, bought back, and made beautiful for him in every good work.

Take the picture of the Tabernacle. God told Moses to take acacia wood to make almost all of the larger objects in the Tabernacle and the poles that held it together. As we think of ourselves as the dwelling place of God, we may like to think of the altar, the holy place, the lampstand, or any other beautiful, special object in the meeting place. But according to I Peter, we should see ourselves as the rudimentary elements that hold the dwelling together as we suffer for one another. In this case, we are the poles that are used to build and hold the Tabernacle up.

God told Moses to take the poles of acacia wood that had been made and overlay them with gold. What a beautiful picture of the righteousness of Christ! There is the image of the tree that keeps on popping up in scripture. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the burning bush, the tree on which Christ hung, the use of the image of a tree to describe us, his people, as a tree that should bear good fruit, etc. The image is of humanity, created essence, that God nourishes and cultivates so that it produces good fruit. Or in the case of the judgement of sin it is the human flesh which must die and be destroyed in order for the spirit to rise to new life. It is also our humanity that God clothes in his righteousness that we might produce fruit in every good work for him. This is the image that the poles in the Tabernacle should evoke. We are “living poles” if you will, holding up the Tabernacle. Not because we are special or innately deserving, but because we were chosen by the master designer and builder of this heavenly kindom. We were made straight and true by his loving sacrifice and overlaid in the gold of his righteous life through his ressurection from the dead to be useful and beautiful as we serve in his house!