In Psalm 90:1 Moses says, “O Lord, You have been our dwelling place / In all generations.” While Moses was traveling in the wilderness with the children of Israel for forty years, in his deep feeling he was dwelling in God. Moses knew that God Himself is our eternal dwelling place, our eternal habitation. In Deuteronomy 33:27 he says, “The God of old is your habitation.” Later, Israel, under God’s punishment, was scattered among the Gentile nations. In Ezekiel 11:16 God said to Israel that in their dispersion He would be their sanctuary.
Many people feel that we serve God in the sanctuaries, in the chapels, and in the cathedrals. However, the Bible reveals that we serve God in God Himself. We may also say that we serve God in the Spirit. The New Testament shows us that the Spirit is the processed Triune God reaching us. When God in the Son went to the cross to die for our sins and to accomplish redemption, He was the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world (John 1:29). When God reaches us, however, He is the Spirit.
Actually, we serve God in God Himself as the Spirit reaching us. When we pray, we pray in God Himself as the Spirit reaching us. The proper prayer and the proper service that we render to God must be in God Himself. If we pray in ourselves, that prayer is not genuine.
When we enter into eternity, we will dwell, serve, worship, and pray in the processed Triune God as the Spirit reaching us. The entire New Jerusalem is a great reaching of God to us. We all need to ask ourselves regarding where we pray and where we are staying while we are worshipping God. When we pray and worship God, we must be in our redeeming, processed God who is reaching us as the Spirit. This means that we must be in the Spirit, praying, worshipping, and enjoying Him.
We should pray in the triune, processed, redeeming God reaching us as the Spirit. Whenever we pray, we should have the deep thought that we are in the Triune God, the processed God, the redeeming God, the God who is now the all-inclusive Spirit reaching us. We should pray to God in God Himself. Whether He answers our prayers or not is secondary. When we pray in this way, we enjoy Him in an excellent way. This kind of prayer makes us ecstatic.
Today we do not have a physical temple, for our temple is our triune, processed, redeeming God reaching us as the Spirit. Such a Spirit is our temple, our “floating home” that is always with us. We worship and serve God in this temple, and day and night God is our dwelling place.
Even today our God is our temple. It is not reasonable to think that when we enter into eternity we will have another temple. We will not get out of God and enter into another temple. When we enter into eternity, God will be our temple, and this should not be a surprise to us. We should be able to say that while we were living on the earth, we remained in this temple all the time, in our God who is triune, processed, redeeming, and reaching us as the Spirit. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate consummation of the entire divine revelation, and this is a practical application of God being our temple.
Today we are dwelling in this temple. This is our habitation, this is the place where we serve and worship God, and this is the place where we meet. In the church meetings we need to have the realization that we are actually meeting in the triune, processed, redeeming, and reaching God. In eternity the New Jerusalem will be a consummation of today’s reality.
In John 4 the Lord told us that God is seeking the proper worshippers who worship Him in spirit (v. 23). In Revelation, however, John tells us that the temple in which we worship is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. John 4:24 also tells us that God, whom we worship, is Spirit. This is the Triune God reaching us as the Spirit, and this is our temple. Here in this temple, we worship and dwell with God in our spirit. In our human spirit He dwells in us as His tabernacle, and in the divine Spirit we dwell in Him as our temple. In our spirit we enjoy our triune, processed, redeeming, and reaching God as our habitation. What an enjoyment! We all need to exercise our spirit in order to be accustomed to enjoying God as our temple.
In the past there was a temple in the ancient city of Jerusalem, but in the New Jerusalem there is no temple (Rev. 21:22), for God Himself and Christ are the temple. We may ask, then, since God and Christ are the temple, are They the Dwellers within the city or are They the dwelling place? The answer is that They are both. They are the temple where the serving ones will dwell and serve. A temple is a place where those who serve God dwell. The dwellers are the dwelling place, and the dwelling place consists of the dwellers. If we would dwell in the church today, we must be built into it; that is, we must become a part of it. This is very subjective and experiential. If we are not built into the New Jerusalem, we will never enter into that city. God is the God whom we serve, but He is also the temple where we serve. This means that we serve God in God, a thought that is exceedingly deep. God and Christ are our temple. We must serve God in God; we must serve Christ in Christ.
The New Jerusalem is a mutual habitation. God dwells in us, and we dwell in God. The church today is a habitation where God may dwell (Eph. 2:22), and God is the home where we may dwell. We have the presence of God and Christ as the temple. We are not simply before God’s presence, but we are in His presence. The presence of God and Christ becomes a dwelling place for us. If we would serve God and Christ in the church, we must be surrounded and covered by God and Christ. This is intensely personal, subjective, and experiential. Here we need to consider that the air is within us and that the air is also outside of us. If the air were not in us, we would soon expire, and if we were not in the air, we could not breathe. Likewise, God and Christ are in us, and we are in God and Christ. We may experience this as a reality in our life. One day, in the new heaven and new earth, we will realize this in the fullest way. We will see how much God and Christ are to us. He dwells in us, and we dwell in Him; hence, we will enjoy His presence to the uttermost.