God's Eternal Dwelling Place

This is my rest forever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.

Psalm 132:14

O Glorious Words!  It is God himself who here speaks.  Think of rest for God!  A Sabbath for the Eternal and a place of abiding for the Infinite!  He calls Zion "my rest."  Here His love remains and displays itself with delight.  "He shall rest in his love."  And this for ever!  He will not seek another place of repose, nor grow weary of His saints.  In Christ the heart of Deity is filled with content, and for His sake He is satisfied with His people, and will be so world without end. 

These august words declare a distinctive choice--this and no other; a certain choice--this which is well known to Me;  a present choice--this which is here at this moment.  God has made His election of old, He has not changed it, and He never will repent of it:  His church was His rest and is His rest still.  As He will not turn from His oath, so He will never turn from His choice.  Oh, that we may enter into His rest, may be part and parcel of His church, and yield by our loving faith a delight to the mind of Him who taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in them that hope in His mercy.

"Here will I dwell; for I have desired it."  Again are we filled with wonder that He who fills all things should dwell in Zion--should dwell in His church.  God does not unwillingly visit His chosen; He desires to dwell with them; He desires them.  He is already in Zion, for He speaks here, as one upon that spot.  Not only will he occasionally come to His church, but He will dwell in it, as His fixed abode.  He cared not for the magnificence of Solomon's temple, but He determined that at the mercy seat He would be found by suppliants, and that thence He would shine forth in brightness of grace among the favoured nation.

All this, however, was but a type of the spiritual house, of which Jesus is foundation and cornerstone, upon which all the living stones are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.  Oh, the sweetness of the thought that God desires to dwell in His people and rest among them!  Surely if it be His desire, He will cause it to be so.  If the desire of the righteous shall be granted, much more shall the desire of the Righteous God be accomplished. 

This is the joy of our souls, for surely we shall rest in God, and certainly our desire is to dwell in Him.  This also is the end of our fears for the Jerusalem of God; for if the Lord dwell in her, she shall not be moved.

~Charles H. Spurgeon