God Does Not Dwell in Buildings — He Dwells Inside You

Before the Tabernacle — No Holy Place at All

This is the beginning of something totally new in the history of the Israelite faith. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fathers of our faith, did not have a holy place nor did they have a "temple" of any kind. They worshiped God anywhere and everywhere. They built altars and made offerings of animals anytime and in every place. There was no religious "establishment" to administer their relationship with the Almighty. The only people who had temples to their gods were the idol-worshiping nations.

The children of Israel had just come out of Egypt. Egypt was full of the most magnificent temples to their gods. There were many gods in Egypt, and each one of their gods had his private temples and worship. Some of these temples, even some with traces from the time of Moses, are still standing and still magnificent. Now, in the wilderness of Sinai, all of Israel is living in tents, they move according to the signal of the Lord — by day a cloud and by night a fire. There is nothing set in stone other than the Ten Commandments. Everything is makeshift and temporary.

The Pagan Concept vs. The Hebrew Concept

The concept of the pagan temple is that the temple is where God dwells. The house of the Lord, the house of God, where God dwells. There's a statue in the Holy of Holies and you are worshiping God there. You have to clean him up. You have to feed him. You have to provide for him. That's the pagan concept. It's not the Hebrew concept.

Here is what God actually said. The Hebrew is hard to translate properly. A literal translation of Exodus 25:8 would be:

The Christian translators could not get the point. They were used to church buildings, and temples, and cathedrals — the house of God was the building itself. But the sanctuary is only a symbol. It is only a tool. God's presence is there above it. There is no statue in the temple in Jerusalem. There is no statue in the tabernacle. There is only the Ark of the Covenant — the tablets of the Law that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, the jar of manna, and the staff.

The Tabernacle that Moses and Aaron built was patterned after a heavenly Tabernacle that Moses saw when he was atop Mt. Sinai talking to the Lord for 40 days and nights.

Solomon Said It. Paul Said It. The Prophets Said It.

King Solomon, who built the first Temple of stone in Jerusalem, dedicated it with these words in 1 Kings 8:27:

That's the difference between pagan worship and the worship of Israel. The temple is only a box and only a tool. It gives the people of Israel a sense of belonging to God and a sense of participating with God. But it is not the house where God dwells.

The Apostle Paul understood this perfectly when he stood in Athens — in the paragon of idolatry in the ancient world — and said:

God doesn't need you. You need Him. This concept is from the Old Testament all the way to the New Testament. And most of the Christian world has forgotten it. The Protestant Reformation did not change the paradigm on which Roman Christianity was based.

God Wants to Dwell Inside of You

This is how the prophets and the New Testament understood the role of the Tabernacle:

In the second part of this verse, Paul is fusing two texts: Leviticus 26:12 and Ezekiel 37:27 — the text from the vision of the valley of dry bones that come to life.

And from the prophets:

The ultimate fulfillment of this is in the promises of God to Jeremiah in the context of the New Covenant:

When I travel in the USA and pass some church buildings, most of the days of the week they are empty and locked up. At least Catholic churches are open most of the time, and there is at least some person inside to hear you and to talk to you! If we would learn from the Torah and from the Old Testament, I believe that we would have a much more biblical attitude towards church buildings, and become more useful to our communities with the wealth and facilities that the Lord has given us.