God's earthly dwelling-place.
As in Psalms 128:5, Jehovah blesses the covenant people out of Zion, so here they bless him out of Zion—that is the place where the reciprocal relation is best and chiefly realized. What ideas can be properly associated with God's having a permanent abode on earth? We must be careful to distinguish between ideas that may be cherished, and ideas that must be dismissed as unworthy.
I. GOD'S EARTHLY DWELLING-PLACE CENTRALIZES THE RELIGION AND THE NATION. "In Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Under some circumstances it may be a good thing to have religion localized; but advancing development makes such localization a hindrance and an evil. "The time now is when neither on Gerizim nor at Jerusalem shall men worship the Father." The material help is only wanted until the spiritual has come. Then man himself is God's dwelling-place.
II. GOD'S EARTHLY DWELLING-PLACE DECLARES GOD'S RELATIVITY TO MAN. We often think of man as in God's image; but there is an answering truth—God is in man's image. That God should want an earthly dwelling-place convinces men that he is one of themselves; seeing he wants what they want. So God's temple dwelling-place was the foreshadowing of, and preparation for, his incarnation in his Son, and for the spiritual indwelling by the Holy Ghost.
III. GOD'S EARTHLY DWELLING-PLACE CONVINCES OF THE IMMEDIACY OF HIS KNOWLEDGE. God absent in heaven is thought of as knowing by report. God actually and always present knows at once, is immediately interested, and can instantly act. Illustrate by the moral effect of the absence of an earthly king, and the moral effect of the sense of his presence.
IV. GOD'S EARTHLY DWELLING-PLACE BECOMES A PERPETUAL CALL TO DUTY, AND INSPIRATION OF GOODNESS. The sense of service is quickened when that service may be called for at any hour; and the hope of winning the King's approval renews holy endeavor. God's dwelling with men is real, but unseen. No Jew would doubt that God was in his holy temple. But no Jew ever saw him. That unseen presence helped to the later conception of God dwelling unseen in the temple of man's soul, apprehended as the Holy Ghost.—R.T.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT