[This devotion is taken from one section of the sermon on John 1:14-18 preached December 16, 2018.]

The Word was with God. The Word was God. Nothing was created apart from the Word.

That Word became flesh, became baby Jesus laid in a manger. And that Word dwelt among us.

The Greek word translated “dwelt” is interesting; it has the same root as “tent” or “tabernacle.” Thus, one literal translation renders this clause, “the Word became flesh and did tabernacle among us.”

Any person familiar with Hebrew Scriptures reading this text in Greek would see the connection. John is telling us that Jesus is like the ancient Israelite tabernacle that accompanied them through the wilderness and was the center of their religion until Solomon built the temple about 400 years later. The tabernacle and the temple both always pictured God dwelling with His people, God being in the midst of His people, leading them, loving them, interacting with them.

This idea is right at the center of God’s promises, whether under the Old Covenant or the New. Let’s survey some of the key passages that highlight this promise:

In Exodus 29, after describing how the Israelites are to construct the tabernacle, God says:

There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory…. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And 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. (From Exodus 29:43-46).

Then multiple times in Deuteronomy, God speaks of “the place that the LORD will choose, to make his name dwell there.”

In Deuteronomy we also see the image flipped for the first time. Instead of God dwelling in the midst of His people, in Deuteronomy 33:27 we read, “The eternal God is your dwelling place.”

So He dwells with us – and we dwell in Him. Jesus will later use both of these images in one verse:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. (John 15:5)

Many psalms expand on this image of God’s dwelling. For example, in Psalm 84 we read:

How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. … For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

The prophets look forward to a time when God will dwell yet more intimately with His people. And they see that in that day, God’s people will consist of those from many different nations:

Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the LORD. And many nations shall join themselves to the LORD in that day, and shall be my people. And I will dwell in your midst. (Zechariah 2:10-11).

Ezekiel 37 is a well known passage that highlights a number of New Covenant promises, including the removal of our hearts of stone and replacement with hearts of flesh. In the midst of those promises, God states:

I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

We today do not have the picture of the tabernacle or the temple. But if we are in Christ Jesus, God is dwelling in us today.

How? In at least two different and complementary ways. First, your individual body is a temple, a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19.

Second, all of God’s people together constitute a temple in which God dwells. As the Apostle says in Ephesians 2 when speaking particularly to non-Jewish believers:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22, emphasis added)

So now each of our bodies individually is a temple of the Holy Spirit; now, together we are members of the household of God and are being built into a dwelling place for God by the Holy Spirit.

That dwelling place will be completed in the new heavens and earth:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21:3)

So do you see the flow of all of Scripture?

The Word Became flesh in part so that He might dwell with you, with His people, for all eternity – so that – flipping the image – He could be your dwelling place for all eternity, so that He could:

• Shelter you under His tent
• Invite you into His home
• Show You His hospitality
• Welcome you into His family
• And thus so that you could know Him and love Him and delight in Him
• So that He could be your God and you could be His people.

So “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” is not only a great theological truth about incarnation, stating that God became man. It is much more. It is both a partial fulfillment of God’s great promise of dwelling with His people, and the means by which that great promise will come to complete fruition.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

He continues to dwell among us.

And He will be our dwelling place forever and ever.