1 Kings 8:27

Will God indeed dwell? The sanctuary was built as the dwelling place of God. David, upon moving the ark, made acknowledgment of the fact that God had chosen Zion and had “desired it for his habitation,” promising that He would make it His “rest for ever,” and that there He would dwell (Ps. 132:13, 14). But when Solomon contemplated the greatness and the grandeur of God, the One who inhabiteth eternity, who had “measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance” (Isa. 40:12), it seemed incomprehensible that such a God would take up His abode on earth, in such a house as Solomon had made. The thought here expressed illustrates a constant contrast that runs through the entire Bible. On the one hand there is a most profound and unvarying conception of the infinity of God, eternal, invisible, incomprehensible, of the Lord high and holy, the great “King of kings, and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16). On the other hand, there is an equally vivid conception that the infinite Jehovah is a God who is very near at hand, who is a friend of man and a personal companion to all; one who walks and talks with men and dwells in earthly sanctuaries made for His holy abode. It will never cease to be a source of wonderment that One so mighty and so transcendently great should condescend to take recognition of mortal man and come to dwell in sanctuaries of mere wood and stone, and within the human heart.