3.178 I Will Dwell Among the Children of Israel

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

Today let's talk about a foolproof, guaranteed way to not be forsaken by the Lord. We find this inside of 1 Kings chapter 6. As we're reading this week, the end of 2 Samuel and the beginning of 1 Kings, we get our transition into Solomon.

We see his wisdom inside of the stories as we're reading them. And then we see the famous beginnings and endings actually in our readings of Solomon building the temple, the house of the Lord. This is going to be an incredibly important part for the house of Israel as they've been dealing with the traveling tabernacle all through the Old Testament.

We've been through all of all of these hundreds of years. We've got this traveling tabernacle, and now we're going to have a fixed location as Solomon builds his temple inside of 1 Kings chapter 6. We have all sorts of descriptions of the building of this temple.

And I don't know if any of you are AI users out there in any sort of way, but I thought it'd be fun to take 1 Kings chapter 6. I copied all of the verses, and I just asked one of my AI friends, one of my AI bots. I said, 'Hey, what would this look like based on all of these descriptions here?' And then asked for a photorealistic version.

If you want to do that, that's cool. If not, don't, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but pretty cool just to see based on the description in the Old Testament itself, what the temple that Solomon builds may have possibly looked like. Now, as we get into our verse for today, it's a continuation of yesterday a little bit, but I want to focus on the second half of the agreement with the Lord rather than the first half we focused on yesterday.

Yesterday we talked a lot about the idea of 'if'. If you're going to do those things, then the promises of the Lord are in place. Today I want to focus on the promise from the Lord that he gives to Solomon and the children of Israel.

So, your reading today is going to be the second half of a sentence. You're going to first take a look at 1 Kings 6, verse 12, if you want the front end of the sentence here. This is the 'if' part of it, right?

So I won't read this one, but basically, you know, you've got to walk in the statutes, execute the Lord's judgments, keep the commandments—very similar to what we looked at yesterday in the 'if' side of things. But then we get the 'then' side of things with the Lord's arrangement in verse 13. And that's where our verse lies today.

It says, 'And I—' this is the Lord speaking—'and I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake my people Israel.' Now, isn't it interesting the Lord's guarantee that comes into play here? First of all, the concept of the Lord dwelling among His children is phenomenal to me. That's a huge desire of my heart.

I want the presence of the Lord with me everywhere. How do I do that? Well, it looks like in verse 12, it's actually quite a simple path.

I keep the commandments. I seek to walk in the statutes of the Lord. I keep my covenants that I've made in the temple, and the Lord will dwell among the children of Israel.

And then the second part comes into play, and it's every bit as desirable for me—'and will not forsake my people Israel.' Now that had to have been quite a lot of work. We had a promise for the Bibles I have experienced and I can testify the 'then' parts of the promises of the Lord. As I have sought to keep my covenants and commandments, I have felt His presence.

I have been uplifted by the Holy Spirit. I have experienced these things to a level that I can say confidently that I know that it was nothing else but the Lord's hand in my life. Do I feel that way 100% of the time?

No. But I know that as I work towards it, the Lord absolutely dwells among my family and that I am not forgotten or forsaken by the Lord as I go forward and do my best. I promise the same for you as well.

That's all for today, my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope