Why Does God Feel Distant When I'm Doing Everything Right?

44 “Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it, according to the pattern that he had seen. 45 Our fathers in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our fathers. So it was until the days of David, 46 who found favor in the sight of God and asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47 But it was Solomon who built a house for him. 48 Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, 49 “ ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? 50 Did not my hand make all these things?’

The passage begins with the truth that the ancient Israelites had been given the tent of witness. Why does Stephen call the Tabernacle the “tent of witness”? Well, it’s because the Tabernacle housed the stone tablets given to Moses when are called the “tablets of testimony” in Exodus

16 And you shall put into the ark the testimony that I shall give you.

21 And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you.

18 And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.

15 Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written.

So you have the ark bearing witness as evidence of God's covenant relationship with Israel and the Tabernacle is named after what was in it. Think of the Tabernacle as the house which contains the document that the nation of Israel agreed to and part of the agreement was the tent itself. This was where God Almighty, the Creator of everyone and everything would come and descend to be with His people.

The thing about the Tabernacle is that it was God's plan to Moses. Last week, we saw that people had in their minds an idea to worship the Lord by making a golden calf.

4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.”

These are the gods, and we will have a feast to the Lord. God gave Israel over to worship the host of heaven.

42 But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: “ ‘Did you bring to me slain beasts and sacrifices, during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 43 You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made to worship; and I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’

Matthew Henry points out that it was for the better part of forty years in the wilderness that Israel barely offered God a sacrifice, they didn't even keep the Passover after the second year. Stephen's whole point in this speech is that the pattern didn't stop there. The council now accusing him of threatening Moses' customs is repeating the same attitude their ancestors showed, a zeal for religious form that shows up only when it's useful for accusing someone else, not a genuine devotion to God's ways.

Look back at how Stephen ended up in this room in the first place. Acts 6 tells us the men who couldn't out-argue him didn't repent or reconsider, they went and found people willing to lie under oath. They broke the ninth commandment to prosecute a man they claimed was disrespecting the Law. Think about that for a second. Their zeal for the Lord was so shallow that they were willing to violate God's Law to defend God.

That's not really zeal for God's law at all. That's using God's law as a shield for something else. They were protecting their own position, their own authority, their own comfort, and when the law got in the way of that goal, they simply set it aside. The commandment didn't matter. Winning did.

Here's where this gets uncomfortable for us. I doubt any of us are going to hire false witnesses this week, but ask yourself how often you're willing to bend something you know is true, in service of a fight you've already decided you're going to win. Half true versions of a conversation, told in a way that makes you look better and the other person look worse. A screenshot posted without context because the full context complicates the point you're making. Sharing something you haven't checked out online because it confirms what you already wanted to believe about someone. That's the exact same thing that the Sanhedrin is doing here. They cared more about winning than about truth, and they told themselves it was for God's sake the entire time.

If you find yourself willing to tweak the truth, to gossip and dress it up as concern, or take the worst possible reading of someone's words, because you've decided they're the one in the wrong, you're not defending God's law in that moment. You're doing precisely what the men prosecuting Stephen did. You've just traded a courtroom for a group chat.

And notice that the tent of witness is contrasted with the tent of Moloch. Moloch, the false god that kings of Judah like Ahaz and Manasseh sacrificed their own children to. God gave his people over to it because of their rejection of their deliverer. And catch what that means. Israel had the tent of witness and the tent of Moloch at the same time. You can have the right building, the right Bible, the right songs, and the right doctrine, and still have a heart that is a long way off. This tent, the Tabernacle was designed to be transported all over the desert and verse 45 says

45 Our fathers in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our fathers. So it was until the days of David,

Point 1 if you’re taking notes:

I. God Chose to Move With His People

His presence was never location-bound by His own design. God could have remained on the mountain. He could have just gone to Shiloh where the Tabernacle was set up. He could have waited in Jerusalem for them. But instead, the Lord went with His people. The point is that from the beginning starting with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and now Joshua, God's presence was not tied to a certain location.

Now let me say that carefully. God did appoint places where His people would meet with Him. Shiloh was real, Jerusalem was real. But appointing a place is not the same thing as being confined to one. No place ever contained Him.

It wasn't corrected when the temple was constructed by Solomon. This just shows how God chose to dwell with His people for hundreds of years! Listen Church, God is not anchored to any certain place. God's presence is here in this room just as it is in your living room. If the only time you encounter the Lord is in Sunday service, then that's worth taking a close look at, not because Sunday mornings are unimportant, but because it's not the only way that God moves. God is not confined to this room, but He did command His people to gather, and He does something here He doesn't do in your living room.

But, the Tabernacle was a tent, and here is David, sitting in a palace built out of cedar, and the thought comes to him that the God of all things is still living in a tent. David asked the Lord God to build a dwelling place and what's amazing is that Stephen spends almost zero words on the temple itself which is crazy to me because he's answering a charge specifically about the temple!

What Stephen does say is that David found favor in the sight of God.

1 Now when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, 2 the king said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent.” 3 And Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you.” 4 But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, 5 “Go and tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord: Would you build me a house to dwell in? 6 I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling. 7 In all places where I have moved with all the people of Israel, did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” ’

Notice, that God doesn’t rebuke David. The bigger question is “Why?” And in 1 Kings 8:17-18

17 Now it was in the heart of David my father to build a house for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. 18 But the Lord said to David my father, ‘Whereas it was in your heart to build a house for my name, you did well that it was in your heart.

So God commends David’s desire to build a temple, but we have to remember

II. God Honored the House, But He Never Needed It

He never needed one. Two things are true at the same time here. David's desire was good, and God said so. And God had gotten along for hundreds of years without a house and never once demanded one. Remember what He says through Nathan, “In all those years of moving around with Israel, did I ever ask a single one of the judges, why have you not built me a house of cedar? No. Not once.”

Now hear me carefully, because I don't want to overstate this. God was not opposed to the temple. In the very next breath, God tells David that his own son is going to build it.

12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

So the temple was God's plan. But look at how it came about. God did not demand it. David wanted to give, and God received the gift and appointed the son who would carry it out. The temple was never something God was lacking and needed His people to supply. It was something God ordained and graciously received from their hands and with this being the primary charge against Stephen, the fact that he only mentions the temple in passing is itself an argument that this is not about the temple, but about the God of the temple!

Listen Christian, God does not need what you do for Him. God has no needs from you. But what you do offer to Him with a pure and sincere heart without pretense, He gladly receives and uses for His glory. So Christian, if you feel like your service to the Lord is amazingly fruitful, remember that God was not lacking anything before you got here. He was complete without your work, and that is exactly why He can receive it as a gift and not as a payment. And for the Christian who feels like they have nothing to offer, I pray this is a comfort. Your works were never what earned His favor to begin with. He commands your obedience and He will produce it in you, but what He asks of you first is your trust in Christ.

So let's think about this, if God ordained the temple, received it as a gift, and still never needed it, what happens when the great-great grandchildren start believing God cannot get along without it?

Well that leads to the last point:

III. Yet the Most High Does Not Dwell in Houses Made by Hands

That's Stephen's point here, that God doesn't dwell in houses made by hands. And here's the thing that ought to stop these men cold. Stephen is not the first one to say it. Solomon said it. On the day he dedicated the very building he had just finished, standing in front of the whole nation, here is what he prayed:

27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!

The man who built the temple understood on day one what these men have forgotten. Stephen isn't attacking the temple. He's quoting the temple's own builder back to them.

That phrase "made by hands" is one word in the Greek, and scholars point out that every time it shows up in the Greek Old Testament, it's talking about idols. Stephen used this same language back in verse 41 about the golden calf, the works of their hands, and now he reaches for it again here. Stephen is being deliberate.

Then Stephen quotes Isaiah 66:1-2 and the context there is about God promising a new heaven and earth in Isaiah 65. Let's look at what Stephen said again, Acts 7:49-50

49 “ ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? 50 Did not my hand make all these things?’

Now catch the whole argument in one thought. Their fathers made a calf with their hands and they made images of Moloch and Rephan with their hands. Solomon built a temple with his hands. And then look at God's own question at the end of verse 50. Did not my hand make all these things? Their hands made the temple. God's hands made the universe the temple is sitting in.

Listen Church, the sin was not in building the temple. The sin was presuming that having a structure guaranteed God's presence and favor. It is the same sin as the golden calf. The calf was an attempt at having a god that could be seen and managed, and that is exactly what these men had turned the temple into in their own hearts. Stephen isn't teaching us to despise the temple. He's teaching us not to confuse God's gifts with God Himself. Remember when I talked about the ninth commandment and how these men broke God's law? Well, it's because they trusted the institution rather than God. They thought that the temple, circumcision, the law meant they had right standing with God. So protect the traditions and the customs and they protect salvation, even if they have to lie to do it.

Man do we get sucked into this same thing, don't we? We believe "If I have my Bible time, God will bless my day." or "If I give this much, God will do this…" or "If I serve enough, God will be pleased with me" but those aren't acts of devotion, those are false beliefs of managing God and so when hard seasons come people think "God must be upset with me about something! He's not holding up His end of the bargain!" The thing is that God never agreed to that kind of an agreement.

And we can do it together as a church too. Every good thing God gives a congregation can quietly turn into the thing we trust. A style of worship. A program that worked for twenty years. A building. Ask yourself this week whether there's anything here you would fight harder to protect than you would fight to protect the truth. Because that's the tell. That's how you know something has stopped being a gift and started being a guarantee.

The charge against Stephen was that he said Jesus would destroy "this place". The charge against Jesus was brought

57 And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’ ”

You have godless men setting up false witnesses and charging Stephen with the same thing, threatening the temple. Now look carefully at what those witnesses actually did. Jesus never said "I will destroy this temple." He said "Destroy this temple," and He said it to them. They took a challenge He made to them and reported it as a threat He made against them. That's how a lie works. It keeps just enough of the words to sound true. But here's what those false witnesses stumbled into without ever knowing it. Jesus really was going to replace the temple, with Himself.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

That word "dwelt" is the same root as the word for tent back in verse 44. John is telling us that God pitched His tent among us, and this time the tent was a man. The tabernacle was a tent God filled with His glory. Jesus is God come in the flesh.

19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation)

24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

Soon Stephen will look into heaven and see Jesus Christ standing at the right hand of God. But listen, everything that Stephen has talked about in this sermon, every single location: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Midian, Sinai, Shiloh, Jerusalem… all of them point to a Person, not a place. The answer to you who have been trying to fit God into some kind of a formula is not a better formula or more effort. The answer is in a Person who cannot be mastered or managed. The answer is to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And do you see what He does with the people who trust Him? Stephen has spent this whole sermon telling us where God does not dwell. So where does He dwell now?

And how does a sinner become a place where God lives? Not by building something impressive enough for Him or by cleaning yourself up first. Jesus Christ died in the place of sinners, He was buried, and God raised Him from the dead. Everyone who turns from their sin and trusts Him is joined to Christ and receives His Spirit. Listen to what happens when you become a Christian,

19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

Listen, in Christ He is the building a living temple and invite you to life in the Spirit

16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

Church, listen… David wanted to build God a house and God told him he couldn’t but His son could. The truth is that Solomon built a glorious building for the Lord, but God sent His Son to be the true Temple, raised by Himself, constructed out of His people, with His own Son as the cornerstone. The temple was never the end of the story. It was pointing to Jesus Christ the whole time.

HEAD: God wants you to know that He has never been contained by anything human hands have built.

HEART: God wants you to believe that Jesus Christ is where God came to dwell with man.

HAND: God wants you to name the thing you've been treating as your guarantee, and let it go back to being a gift.

He will not be contained and He will not be managed. So will you stop trying to build Him a house, and let Him build you into His?