Building the Temple

SERMON: 2016-05-22--bt0516--building-the-temple-part-5 SOURCE DURATION: 00:45:10.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with a review of the series (segment [0]) and concludes with pastoral application/prayer material (segment [379]). Both are integral parts of the main sermon recording. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:44:59.960-00:45:06.040 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- As I said a few moments ago, this is the last in a series of messages that we've been doing on building the temple. It's been about four weeks since we last look at this topic. Allow me a few moments to do a quick review as to where we have been. God's desire we have been seeing together in this series of messages is to dwell among his people. In the Old Testament, he first dwelt among them in the tabernacle, then later in the temple. In the New Testament, he comes to dwell among us in the person of Jesus Christ. John's Gospel tells us he tabernacled among us, a deliberate word choice. And then after the Feast of Pentecost, which we celebrated last Sunday, he came to live in the church. And all of this is preparation for the day of eternity when you and I and God will dwell together forever and ever. Here is how it reads in the book of Revelation chapter 21 verse 3, "I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.'" And just as in the Old Testament the tabernacle and then later on the temple had to be built up piece by piece, so today God is building his spiritual temple of the church. That's what Paul talks about you might recall in Ephesians 2 the verses 21 and 22 when it says concerning the person of Jesus, "In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit." And I believe with all my heart that what God is after in this day and age is to build communities of faith composed of people who are not only properly related to God through faith in Jesus, but who are also properly related to one another so that God can in fact live in them and show himself through them. I think that's the implication or the meaning of 1 John 4-12, that passage Phil Hamburg shared with you last week where John says this, these words, "No one has ever seen God but if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." I believe what that means is this, nobody's ever seen God but when you and I by faith in Jesus are properly related to God and he comes to live in us individually and corporately then as we practice the kind of attachment that Phil was talking about with you last week then God's love becomes manifest through us not only but God becomes visible to the world. You might remember the little story about the boy without shoes wistfully standing at the window of a shoe store wishing that he could have cladding for his feet when along comes this lady who understands his desire, takes him inside, buys him a pair of shoes and the boy looks at him with big eyes and he says, "Lady, are you Jesus?" That is what the church is called to be, a place where God dwells by his spirit. Big question of course is how do we get there and the last time that we looked at this passage together almost a month ago now we saw that what David did is took three very practical steps in his preparation for building this temple just very quickly. Number one he followed God's plan. He followed God's plan for the temple and God's plan for the temple in New Testament language is that it's God's purpose to unite all things in heaven and on earth in the person of Jesus Christ. Then he obtained buy-in from the whole community because God's purpose again in both Old and New Testament is that we should be united in heart and mind to follow hard after the purposes of God without any compromise. That brings us this morning then to a third strategy that David develops here in this particular passage and that is this he invites the whole community to contribute to the building of the temple and that's what 1 Chronicles 29 deals with particularly in the first nine verses. David begins in verse 2 by contributing from his treasury this is what he says "with all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God." Then in verse 3 he says "besides in my devotion to the temple of my God I now give my personal treasures of gold and silver over and above everything I have provided for this holy temple." And then in verse 9 he challenges the whole community and he says "who is willing to consecrate himself today to the Lord?" And people rose to the occasion they dug deep they gave generously and I pointed out last time the total value of the gold, silver, precious stones contributed for the building of the temple was a phenomenal amount in the neighborhood of 216 or 17 trillion dollars in today's currency. That is a great deal of generosity and it flowed out of hearts that were willing. So question for us this morning then is what do we learn from this story? And I want to suggest to you in the time that we have available to us this morning three things just as quickly as we can. Number one whatever we have comes from God. I love the prayers of Scripture because the prayers of Scripture really describe what it is that God is looking for and how it is that the saints of old not only related to God but knew how to lay hold of God and connect with him. And here's what David says in verse 14 and then in verse 16 he says "who am I and who are my people that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you and we have given you only what comes from your hand." And then verse 16 "O Lord our God as for all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your holy name it comes from your hand and all of it belongs to you." And there you have a good summary of the biblical picture of reality. The biblical picture of reality is that God is eternally self-existent everything that exists in the universe comes from God and everything that you and I are and have is given by God for us to use for his glory. And the biblical picture of generosity is that generosity flows from knowing God as the giver of all good things. That's why David is so excited in this particular passage. It isn't just that they've had a terrific fundraiser and people have dug deeply and they've put it all on the table. No, they are reflecting their love for God. That's why he prays in this prayer "Lord let the people and let Solomon continue to put you first." Because the biblical promise is that as we put God first then God will also take care of our needs. And you'll find that same argument used by the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter 4 when he says "Not that I'm looking for a gift, but I'm looking for what may be credited to your account. I have received full payment and even more. I am amply supplied now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gift you sent." Now notice this, they're a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice pleasing to God. And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. The Philippians were a people whose hearts were stirred by Paul's needs. And even though lots of other people were meeting were not meeting his needs, they stepped into it and he says "For your generosity God in turn is going to reward you." And that really captures this biblical idea so clearly expressed by the Lord Jesus earlier in the Gospels when he says in Luke 638 "Give and it'll be given to you. In good measure press down shaken together. Running over will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back." There's a verse in Proverbs that says "One man gives generously and gets richer. Another man refuses to give and he gets poorer and poorer." Generosity flows out of a knowledge of who God is and how fundamentally everything that you and I have is a gift that God has given to us his people. So that's the first lesson that we learned from this particular passage. The second lesson I believe is that God wants us to be good stewards. Peter puts it this way "Each one should use whatever gifts he has received to serve others faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. Now the word ministering there is really the word stewarding. It's being a good steward and a steward is very different from an owner, isn't he? If you're an owner what you have is yours. You can do with it what you want. You want to give it away, you can give it away. You want to keep it, you can keep it. You want to invest it, you can invest it. If you end up losing it, that's your tough luck. It's your responsibility. But a steward is a manager. Actually the word steward in scripture comes from managing a household. It means the owner has given you responsibility for his possessions and it's your job to look after them on his behalf and you're going to be held accountable for how you manage his property. Now the problem with the human race is that ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin, we confuse stewards with owners. We think that whatever we are and whatever we have is our own and you can hear it, you know, in today's culture all the time. Your body is your own. Your time is your own. Your resources are your own. You can do whatever you want to do. It's not true. Part of the lie. Everything we are, everything we have is a trust God has given to us. Our job is to manage these on God's behalf and what that means is that our thinking has to change. We have to stop thinking like we are owners. We have to start thinking like we are managers on behalf of God having to give accountability to God for what he has entrusted to us. That's why Paul writes as he does these very familiar words in Romans chapter 12, 1 and 2, "I urge you brothers in view of God's mercies," he's he spent 11 chapters talking to us about what it is that God has done for us in Christ so that we can receive the blessings of God, "I urge you in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God." This is your spiritual act of worship. In other words, your body is no longer your own. It belongs to God and then he goes on to say this, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good pleasing and perfect will." Notice two little words there, the word conform and the word transform. To conform means to bend to the thinking of the world. The word transform there in the Greek is the word metamorphosis. It means to be changed from the inside out. And if you look at that passage in the overall context of Romans 12, then scripture is calling us not to view ourselves as owners of life with the whole world serving us, but rather as managers on God's behalf, we need to learn to think of ourselves as servants of God. We are stewards of the grace that he has given us. And what that means is that each of us is called to serve God from the inside out with the resources that he has provided. And in the context of what it is that we've been talking about, which is to build up Christian communities so that it is a place where God can dwell by his spirit. He is calling us to contribute time, talent, and treasure to build him a house. We are to make spiritual sacrifices that are pleasing to him. That's what Peter means in 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 5. You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We're not only living stones, we're also priests. And as priests, we bring time, talent, and treasure to build the house of God so that God can dwell among his people. So practically speaking, what does that look like? Well, just a couple of very practical thoughts. It means that I commit myself and I give my heart to a local body of believers. I give my heart to a local body of believers. We live in a day and age where people are very fond of saying, "I love Jesus, but I don't like the church." And there are all kinds of reasons why people don't feel like they want to be part of the institutional church because, well, frankly we've all got problems enough. But to say that I can have Jesus and not have the local church is to miss the point of what God is after. Because remember, he isn't just interested in getting me to heaven one day, he's interested in building a house. And to build a house, he needs you and me jointly fit together. We need to be fit to the foundation not only, but we need to be joined together. And we need to let God do the kind of work in our hearts that is needed to build us up into a body. And that's possible because the spirit of Jesus wants to push us in that direction. So here's a very valid question to ask and I know for many of you this is a no-brainer, but perhaps some of you struggle with that issue. What is my love for local community look like? What are the things that get in the way of building up the body of Christ? So I commit myself and give my heart to the local body not only, but then I'm prepared to use my gifts to build up the body of Christ. As I said earlier, we all have gifts of time, talent, and treasure. We all have 168 hours a week. I think that's how many hours there are in the week. We all have certain giftings and we all have certain resources. They may not be the giftings or the resources that other people have, but being a steward of God's good gifts means that I am prepared to use these for building up the community of faith. Paul puts it this way, writing to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5.11, he says, "encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you are doing." Build each other up just as you are doing. Now to build each other up is to build each other up in faith. It's to help each other, first of all, to be related properly to Jesus. It's to help each other grow in Jesus and it's to help each other find our place in the body of Christ so that my unique giftings and talents can be used in the service of God for the building up of the body of Christ. I need to build up one another. That means we come to church not just to receive but to give. It means that I look around me and I say, "Lord, who is there in this community who needs my love, who needs my attention, into whose life I can speak words of hope and words of encouragement?" It means I am prepared to invest in the lives of others in a way that honors and glorifies God. It means I give the gift of my presence. I am fully here and I'm fully engaged and I'm fully transparent and I'm fully ready to walk this out with the Lord. Negatively, and I won't talk about this, but negatively it means I avoid negativity. I avoid negativity. We all know that breaking something down is much easier than building it up. All you have to do is look at places where war rages or the forest fires in Fort McMurray. What takes years to build up takes moments to destroy. Time forbids me this morning to talk about this extensively, but you and I both know that sometimes it's very easy to be negative and instead of using our time, talent, and treasure to build up community, I inadvertently sometimes deliberately tear it down. And I'm always mindful of this passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 where Paul really nails this issue. He says, "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and God's spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, for God's temple is sacred and you are that temple." Now the reference there is to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians. And if you know that history, then you will know that because Israel broke covenant with God, God empowered the heathen Babylonians to conquer Israel, cart many of them off into captivity, and ultimately destroyed the temple. That was God's judgment on Israel's unfaithfulness. But in destroying God's temple, they went overboard, they became proud and arrogant, and God in turn destroyed them, delivered Israel, and brought them back to his own country. And I hear these stories coming out of the Middle East of ISIS destroying the church and destroying Christians and murdering people by the hundreds, thinking they're serving the Lord God. And I shudder to think of what's going to happen on the final day of judgment when people discover how badly wrong they have been and how they have destroyed the apple of God's own eye. The church matters to God and won't be tied any man, woman, boy, or girl who destroys the work of God. That's part of the biblical teaching. So everything we get comes from God. Everything that God has given, he wants us to steward on his behalf. It's not ours, it's to be used for him. And then there's a third and final lesson in this passage that I think we need to really lay hold of, and that is this. Our ability to give varies from person to person. Our ability to give varies from person to person. As I said, we all have 168 hours a week. Not everybody has the same amount of free time. We all have certain native and spiritual gifts that God has entrusted to us. Those vary from person to person. We all have resources to one degree or another, but there can be a huge gap between those on the lowest, on the low end of the economic scale to those who are on the other end of the economic scale. What God wants us to understand is that no matter what the resources are that he has entrusted to us, we are all called to be faithful stewards of what he has given. And he will hold us accountable on that final day for how we have stewarded his resources. And there are many stories in the Bible that really illustrate this very powerfully, but the story that always comes back to my mind and often makes me engage in sober self-reflection is the story of the talents in Matthew chapter 25. Chances are if you know your Bible you will know that story. It's a parable. Jesus as a man went on a journey and as he went on his journey he called three of his servants and he gave them an investment of his possession. To one man he gave five talents of money, the next man he gave two talents of money, and the third man he gave one talent. Nobody quite knows how much money that would have been. The conjecture is that a talent was about a thousand of our dollars back in those days at any rate. It was a significant investment in his servants. And the investment is made according to their ability, which is a really important thing to keep in mind. We'll come back to that in just a moment. And he goes on a trip and he wants them to invest those talents on his behalf. After a long time he comes back, calls the servants in to give account to themselves, and the one that received the five talents comes back and he says, "You know, I invested it wisely. I made five more talents. Here are the ten talents that are now yours." Same thing with the second guy. Two talents, makes two talents, gives four back to the master. You know the story, third one, has the one talent, didn't invest it, buried it in the ground, gives it back to his master, and his master is furious. Throws him out into the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, which is biblical language for being sent to hell. So here's the question. Why is the master so angry with the one talented servant? After all, he didn't lose his money. He brought it back to him. He should have been grateful just to get it back the way that it was. Well, he's angry because the servant is more concerned about saving his own hide than he is about being concerned about the master's business. Because if you look at this story, why does he bury his treasure? Well, first of all, he's got resentment towards the master. He thinks he is cruel and harsh and that he is trying to reap where he didn't sow. He's afraid of getting into trouble and so he puts it into the ground and in so doing he illustrates that he's more worried about himself than he is about the master. And he demonstrates that he has no regard at all for the master's interests. That's why he is a worthless servant. And there's a profound lesson there because what it means is that whether we have one talent or two talents or five talents, the Lord wants us to steward it on his behalf. The issue is not what is it going to do for me. The issue is what is it going to do for the Lord. And I've often thought about this passage and I've often reflected on it because I have found it to be so true to life. Because I think if you and I look at areas of our own lives, then what are the areas where it is hardest for us to serve the Lord? Isn't it in the places where we have the least, whether that be time, talent, or treasure, isn't it true that when we feel that other people have been blessed more than I have, whether that's financially or with gifts or with public recognition or any of the things that matter in terms of what a good life looks like in worldly thinking, isn't it true that in those places it's not only very easy to get frustrated because we don't know how to do life here but we get resentful not only at other people who have more or better than what we have but at the Lord who is the giver of those gifts to begin with. And so we minimize our gifts and we say well when I get more money I will start tithing or when I have more time or feel better equipped I will step into a ministry or any of the things that we think we first need to get together in order for us to feel good about ourselves. And the bottom line then is that it's all about me and it's not about Jesus. And I want to tell you something, the Lord would rather have us take the one talent that we have or that we feel that we have and lose it than bury it in the ground because the biblical principle is to him who has more will be given and to him who has not even the little that he has will be taken away from him. Am I making sense here? It is so easy to minimize and be reasoned for that somebody else has got more that I don't have to give I don't have to contribute I don't have to invest and it only illustrates that we're more worried about ourselves than we are about the business of the kingdom. So I want to leave you with three very practical questions and those questions are this coming out of all that we've talked about this morning. What is my love like for the local church on a scale of one to ten? Where do I find myself or going back for a moment to this particular illustration that we've used before in terms of the different groups of people associated if we can put that up community crowd contributor committed and core where in these circles do I find myself? Am I just here to blend in with the crowd? Am I here making gifts of myself to this community? Am I really sold out to this community and what it stands for? Am I really part of the very core of this local church that God is trying to build into a temple where he can dwell by his spirit? Where do I find myself? Ask yourself that question. Second question I want you to ask is what stands in the way if we can put that back up what stands in the way of moving from here to here? I don't want to give the impression that it's wrong to be in any one of those circles because we need people in all of those circles but the idea is that by faith in Jesus we're moving towards the center both in commitment to the Lord and in commitment to each other. Now life in community is not easy. You know I've often said Christians are a lot like like porcupines they have a lot of fine points just don't try to get too close to them. You can't live in community any more than you can't live in family without stepping on each other's toes. Part of growing up is learning to work through those things like you do at home so that you can grow into the unity of Christ. So the second question is what has to happen for me to move towards the center? Then my third question is this what gifts of time talent and treasure what gifts of time talent and treasure has the Lord committed to me that I feel he is calling me to step out into in a deeper way and in a deeper level? What gifts of time talent and treasure where is the Lord urging me to move forward in his purposes? And just to give a little bit of flesh on that I'm gonna ask Dave Bonning to come up for a moment. He shared with me a while back his own journey in being stretched by the Lord in terms of sharing time talent and particularly treasure and I've asked him to share that with you just to show what that looks like in the real world and then we'll bring the service to a clause. This is actually something I'm quite passionate about. I love teaching new members class and the part about stewardship and giving and so forth in there and it's been quite a journey for myself and for my wife over the years. Grew up Christian Reformed and that means quite disciplined and so on but was honestly not that very disciplined about giving. Over the years just gave very scattered kind of way not very much by the end of the year because what happens when you give you know what's left over is there's never much left over is there. And then along came Willow Creek and I've told my story before and how that changed me in many different ways but it changed things here as well. It's a spiritual thing and when my heart came alive spiritually speaking to the things of God then something began to change in our giving and we began to give more and to give more consistently. And then what happened was in 1997 we had a drive to raise three hundred and fifty dollars to purchase the property that this church is built on. That was a huge amount of money to us at that time doesn't seem like very much now but it was huge to us at the time and we prayed about it and really sensed the Lord really stretching us to give an amount way beyond what we had ever given before and we did that and so did many other people and one of the things that happens is as you become intentional about things like that and you stretch you build muscle and so we and others in the church also grew in our ability to give. Came out of that with a real sense of the Lord wanting us to grow in our generosity and to continue to grow in our giving to the church to continue to give towards the building because we were going to build on this property sooner or later but also to really grow what we gave to towards the church budget towards the ministries of the church and so became more and more intentional about that praying about that at the beginning of the year what is it Lord that you want us to give how do you want us to grow and every year it'd be like there'd be another step in that growth process in terms of generosity growth here giving towards this community but also giving towards other causes other Christian causes that he would lay on our hearts. There were some life changes that took place along the way we'd paid off our mortgage at a certain point our kids graduated from the Christian schools we had more resources to give and the Lord just kept saying okay I want you to grow in generosity I want you to grow in this and so that's that's what we did and then along came the building program for this place and again we prayed about it and I got to tell you the figure that came to mind for that campaign just you know kind of blew me out of the water because it was again way more than anything we had ever considered before and I know that was true for many others of you here as well and again it's stretching that muscle building muscle and came out of that again with a sense of okay I want you to stay at that level and keep giving and that was that was quite that was quite stretching actually and along the way there have been some other things for example as a certain one of the things that I learned along the way was that what you need to do is give from the first fruits of your harvest and my harvest not being a farmer is my monthly paycheck so I learned that if I give the first fruits of my harvest it means that I deposit my check and the first check I write is to the church that's the tithe and then the other giving as the Lord directs me as other things come upon my heart and in other things that that he's given us to support including Christian schools another thing that we learned along the way was also one of the things that happened along the way was we started here at the church pre-authorized payments you can you can have an automatic deduction from your bank account and I looked at that and thought that'd be a great way to be very intentional about it but at that time I thought nope that's not what the Lord wants from me what he wants me to do is learn this discipline and what he wants me then to do is to physically write that check intentionally consciously every month at that time that's what I needed to do so that's what I did I still do that I don't need to know I probably could join the PAP thing the pre-authorized payment but that just becomes one of those things that becomes part of your life and so that's that's what we continue to do now I have no idea where our giving is going from here because we give from the resources that the Lord gives us my wife is starting to step back from teaching and that's changing the resources that we have but we continue to pray about Lord you've given us to us what do you want us to do with it we know you want us to be [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:44:59.960; remove through 00:45:10.000] generous how do you [CUT] want us to be generous with what you've given us [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:45:10.000; resume after this marked segment]