Turn with me, please, to the Old Testament, to the book of Exodus, chapter 25. I want to read a few verses from a number of places, just a few verses here and there, but beginning with Exodus 25:8.
This is the Lord speaking, so I suppose when the Lord speaks, we ought to pay attention.
And they shall make Me a sanctuary,
That I may dwell among them.
According to all that I shall show thee,
The pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the utensils thereof,
Even so shall ye make it.
Then I think of verse 22 later in that chapter, after it speaks of the ark of the covenant that was placed in that holiest place:
And there will I meet with thee,
And I will speak with thee from above the mercy-seat.
Turn with me to 1 Kings 8:17-19. This is about David. Solomon is speaking:
And it was in the heart of David my father to build a house unto the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.
But the Lord said to David my father, Whereas it was in thy heart to build a house unto My name, thou didst well that it was in thy heart.
Nevertheless thou shalt not build the house; but thy son that shall come forth out of thy loins, he shall build the house unto My name.
Then Psalm 127, just one verse. Now, I believe I like this better in the King James Version, so I will just read it as it is there. Psalm 127:1:
Except the Lord build the house,
They labor in vain that build it.
Turn now with me to the New Testament, Matthew 16:18. This is a very familiar verse. Once again, I would like to read from the Authorized Version:
I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Hebrews 11—we were hearing about that just last week. Hebrews 11:10, again from the Authorized Version. I know Jerry thinks I have gone off the deep end this morning—not much Darby and a lot of Authorized Version. Do not worry, Jerry; we will get back.
For he looked for a city which hath foundations,
Whose builder and maker is God.
Then 1 Corinthians 3:9, the latter part, again from the Authorized Version:
Ye are God’s building.
If you are wondering what you are, the Bible puts it pretty plainly: ye are God’s building.
Finally, turn with me to 1 Peter 2:4-10. I think we should know a little bit about this; we have been meditating in Peter. These are familiar verses.
To Whom coming, a living Stone,
Rejected indeed of men, but with God chosen, precious,
Ye yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood,
To offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Because it is contained in Scripture:
Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious:
And he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame.
For you therefore that believe is the preciousness:
But for such as disbelieve,
The stone which the builders rejected,
The same was made the head of the corner;
And, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence;
For they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.
But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession,
That ye may show forth the excellencies of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light:
Who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God:
Who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
Let us just begin with a word of prayer.
Lord, how grateful we are that You have left us Your Word. What we are after this morning, as we are assembled together in Your presence, is Your living Word. We are asking You, by the Holy Spirit, to breathe upon what is written in these pages, and to draw out of it something of the life of the Lord Jesus.
Let us, by the grace of God and through the Holy Spirit, lay hold of what is of the Lord in these thoughts. We confess, as we come, gladly, our utter dependence on You. We confess our need for You, and we confess our desire that we want, above everything else, the Lord to speak.
Your promise concerning Your sanctuary was, “I will meet you there, and I will speak to you there.” So, Lord, on that basis we come, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Well, I think probably some people may remember—I know some were gone. A number were gone to Slidell, and a number were gone other places—but I began to share a burden the Lord placed on my heart concerning our corporate response to God. It actually came out of a conference that Dana and I were asked to share in.
Dana had a burden on our individual response to God, and my responsibility had to do with our corporate response to God. I would like to repeat this because it is so vital to understand: there is nothing more important in the Word of God than our response to God.
You may debate that, but if you look from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation, all of God’s speaking, all of His revealing, and all the manifestations of the divine are for a single purpose: that we might respond to Who He is.
There is this issue of call and response. God is always calling when you read the Word, and we are always to respond. Whether it is that initial gospel call, when first the Word of God was made alive to you and something of the Holy Spirit convicted you and brought you face to face, for the first time, with the living God—there was a call.
And if you were born again, there was a response. But it goes way beyond the individual. We cannot just leave it with the individual. God is not satisfied with only the individual response; He is after, in fact, a corporate response.
Without the individual response, the Christian life is impossible. Remember that. There is no beginning unless something of the living God has been made known to you by the Holy Spirit, and you have responded to it. That is the beginning. That is what it means to be born again.
But likewise, without the corporate response, the Christian life is incomplete. There are those whose whole experience is the individual response. They have a life with the Lord; they have a relationship with the Lord. But the Lord is after much more than that.
He wants to bring us beyond just that individual relationship with Him into that corporate sphere where we, as the people of God, follow Him together as we gather in His name. That is the purpose of God.
I am going to repeat it again, because I think it is the one burden that I cannot escape:
Without the individual response, the Christian life is impossible.
Without the corporate response, the Christian life is incomplete.
God is after something far more than just us responding to Him.
Last time, we shared on this aspect: the body of Christ, our corporate response to God. There were three aspects.
First of all, there was the privilege of the body. If we have not seen the privilege of being the body of Christ, then I do not know what we have seen. This happens to be the most glorious privilege in all of Scripture, because when you think of it, nothing is closer to you than your body.
You may not like that. I have more flaws than we could stand up here and talk about for the whole hour, but there is nothing closer to you than your body. And the Lord Jesus says this of us: we are His body. What a privilege. We need to see that.
If we see the body of Christ, it will transform our lives.
The second point we made was that we need to see the principles of the body. If you do not see the principles, you will build something, but it is a wonder what you will build.
We talked about three principles. The first is the headship of Christ. There is no head but the Lord Jesus—absolutely no head.
What we do as the body of Christ is hold fast the Head. As we hold fast the Lord Jesus, as we hold fast the Head, then it says the body increases with the increase of God. That is how the body is strengthened and increases.
Sometimes people think the church is sort of like Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman. They think there is no head; it is just a democracy. Everybody does what is right in their own eyes—their burden, their sensing, their service, their work.
Thank God, this body has a Head. When we come under the headship of the Lord Jesus, all is right. Life flows out from the Head. The anointing flows out from the Head.
You remember that song: how the oil is poured upon the head, and it runs down to the garments, even to the hem of the garment. The whole body comes under the anointing.
The second principle is that there is one body. Then we talked about many members:
One Head,
One body,
Many members.
Every one who is born again is born into the body of Christ, and you are now no longer just unto yourself. The corporate response demands that we are members not only of the Lord Jesus, but we are members of one another. Is that not amazing? Many members.
Then we ended with the practice of the body of Christ. I know I probably left that short. I had questions; people said, “Would you get more specific?” Well, today you may wish I had not gotten more specific.
But it all comes down, in the body of Christ, to the practice. I left you with this single question, and it is a burden on my heart:
Are you a functioning member of the body of Christ?
Are you a member in name only? Are you a member who never shows up?
There is a funny story that one day a fellow showed up at a club. He had been a member all his life, and they said, “We did not know you were a member.”
Are you a member—a functioning member—in the body of Christ? That is the bottom-line issue.
What God is after is not a theory. What God is after is not an ideal. God is after a living, breathing, functioning organism where all that He is can be filled in. In that body, He will continue to do and teach, as it says in the book of Acts, and manifest Himself to the entire world.
That is what He is after. This is the question: are you a functioning member in the body of Christ?
First Corinthians 12 is the explanation of the body. First Corinthians 14 shows the expression of the body. Sometimes we have a lot of explanation and very little expression, but it is God’s heart that the expression of the body of Christ be manifest.
We have these ideals where we can talk about, “This is the body, and that is what the body is like,” but when it comes down to it, there is to be a local expression in the assembly of the body of Christ, where every member finds its place, and every member, according to the gifting and the grace of God, finds its function.
It is a local expression. Notice that 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 were written to Corinth—the church at Corinth, a local expression.
In the end, the question will be: are we functioning locally with the saints in the body of Christ?
Well, that is all the introduction you are going to get from me. That is the best I can do. If I left it short again, I apologize. You read and meditate on your own, and maybe you will get something even more wonderful than I did. But there is to be an expression.
Now let us press on to the next issue. Today we will deal with this issue from 1 Corinthians 3:9. This is a profound verse. It tells us who we are:
Ye are God’s building.
Not only are we the body of Christ, but we are God’s building. That is who we are. That is why we gather. That is our whole purpose. That is our destiny.
God has chosen not a building made out of natural stones, not made out of natural wood, but made out of living stones. In that building, He promises to manifest His glory.
It says in Haggai that the latter glory of this house shall exceed the former glory. Some versions read, “The glory of the latter house shall be greater than the former glory.” But actually, there is one house. There is one building.
It has been typified throughout the Old Testament and shown through illustration, but what the Word of God says is, “The latter glory of this house”—one house—“shall exceed the former glory, saith the Lord.”
So we will deal with God’s building today.
Turn back with me to 1 Kings 8. This is what Solomon said in his prayer, verse 27:
But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee;
How much less this house that I have builded!
Can you imagine what dawned on Solomon? He had built this house according to all of God’s instruction. The glory of the Lord was about to fill this house, and he said to God in his prayer, “The heavens cannot contain You.” Not only did he say that; he took it a step further. He said, “The heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this house which I have built.”
But do you know this? This is the honor we have: the Lord’s glory will fill His spiritual house.
I do not know; some of you computer guys can help me with this. I learned a term once in a while. I do not learn too many terms, but once in a while I learned this thing about compression.
I think it means you take a lot of data—maybe it is worthless data; sorry if I offend you, computer guys—and you compress it down and make it fit on something that you would not think could contain it. That is compression. I am not talking about you guys that deal with cars, compression in your cylinder. This is compression of data.
Can you imagine what the Lord, in His eternal purpose, has done? He has said, “All of My glory, all that I am, will be made known.” According to Ephesians 3:10, the manifold wisdom of God is to be made manifest to the principalities and authorities—where?
Through the church.
It had to be a typo. Paul had to make a spiritual typo. He did not mean that. He must have meant, “In My own glorious Person.” But this is the wonder of it:
Ye are God’s building.
Some people wonder about the eternal purpose of God. They hear it so much here. I will tell you a little secret: some get a little agitated by it. I know that. Do not worry; I see the lip curl and the brow raise when we say it.
But we get that phrase from the Bible, from Ephesians 3:10: according to the eternal purpose of God. Jerry, you were right once again—the King James Version says it.
According to the eternal purpose of God, He would make known the manifold wisdom through the church. What an amazing thing. This is who we are, and this is why we gather.
Then you come to the end of the Bible, Revelation 21. It is amazing to me. When we see the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, it says, “As a bride adorned for her husband.” You have to forgive me; I have weddings on the mind.
But it says:
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
And He shall dwell with them,
And they shall be His peoples,
And God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.
Behold, the tabernacle of God. We are the building of God. This is who we are. This is the reason we gather.
We do not meet in the building of God. You cannot correctly say, “I go to the house of God.” You are the house of God. You cannot sit in your living room and say, “I am the house of God.” This is a corporate response.
Paul said to the Corinthians, “Ye are the house of God, the building of God.”
We will look at three things:
Unless we see the house built, it is just theology. The reason we gather is so that we would see the house built: that practical manifestation and expression of the house of God.
There cannot be an adequate corporate response unless we see His heart for His house. There cannot be.
It is the secret revealed from the beginning of the Word to the end of the Word. Just as we read in Exodus, when God finally had a people—after all His early dealings with His own—when He called them out of the bondage of Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai, there He appeared to Moses.
Many people say that what happened there was the giving of the law. But if you look at Exodus, five chapters are devoted to the giving of the law. The remaining chapters—fifteen or sixteen chapters—are devoted to the tabernacle and the service of the people.
What God does when He gets a people is revealed in Exodus 25:8:
And let them make Me a sanctuary;
That I may dwell among them.
According to all that I show thee, the pattern of the tabernacle,
And the pattern of all the furniture thereof,
Even so shall ye make it.
This is nothing less than the heart of God revealed. When He finally had a people—listen to me, I do not know how to emphasize this more strongly—when He brought that people out and brought them into His presence, where there was fire and smoke and the glory of the Lord upon that mountain, the one thing He emphasized besides the law was this:
Ye shall build Me a sanctuary.
Then He went on to say, “I will meet with you there, and I will speak with you there.” We cannot minimize the importance of the building of God.
Listen to how Exodus ends. You may think I am stretching the truth, but Exodus—from chapter 25 right to chapter 40—concludes with this, Exodus 40:38:
For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day,
And there was fire therein by night,
In the sight of all the house of Israel,
Throughout all their journeys.
Dear friends, this is the heart of God. Do you see His heart? I cannot think of anything more important than for us to see His heart.
I think of Ezra, another example. Max shared recently from Ezra. God used a Gentile king, Cyrus king of Persia. His heart was so for His house that He moved sovereignly in that dark period of captivity.
Cyrus, king of Persia, spoke for the Lord and said that all of His people who were willing should go back to Jerusalem—to do what?
To build the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem.
That is the heart of God. We need to see it.
Turn with me to Psalm 132. This is a precious psalm. Look at verses 13 and 14, and consider the heart of God:
For the Lord hath chosen Zion;
He hath desired it for His habitation.
This is My resting-place for ever:
Here will I dwell; for I have desired it.
Brothers and sisters, this is the heart of God. Do you see the heart of God? God comes out and reveals to man, “This is My desire. This is what I have chosen.”
Let me pick on us for a little while. I am good at that because I am one of these flawed human beings. We have so many desires, and they change day and night.
Ask me in five minutes what my desire is. Then ask me tomorrow, and ask me a week from now, and you may get—in fact, you will get—three different answers. I can guarantee it.
But you ask the Lord, “What is Your heart? What do You want?” And He says:
I have chosen Zion, the place of My habitation.
This is My desire.
Oh, the heart of God. If you see it, it will change your life.
I do not think there is anything that expresses the heart of God more than Ephesians 5. Turn with me there.
Let us begin in verse 25. Since I have weddings on the brain, let us stay at the beginning of verse 25:
Husbands, love your own wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it;
That He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
That He might present the church to Himself a glorious church,
Not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing;
But that it should be holy and without blemish.
This is the heart of God. I cannot think of a more precious thing than seeing the heart of God.
But let me go further. It is not enough, when we deal with the corporate response, just to look at the heart of God.
If, in fact, this issue of response is a heart response, then we have to respond to the heart of God. Are you with me? I know that may sound elementary, but if the whole thing about a response is a heart response, then God is looking to put something of His heart in your heart.
That is the secret. If He can do that, then He has you.
I cannot think of a more profound example than David when we look in the Old Testament. In 1 Samuel 13:14, after Saul failed—after he made the offering because he was impatient, out of order, and violated God’s government—Samuel came to him and made this declaration:
The Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart.
That is what He is after. It is not just to see the heart of God; it is for that heart to be put into you—His own heart.
That is an extraordinary proclamation to make about a human being. God Himself says that He found this man. Later, if you read Kings, Chronicles, and Samuel, you begin to see that David had a perfect heart toward God.
Now, most of you know this: David was not a perfect man. David was full of flaws. I think, if we really look at ourselves honestly, we have more than just a few flaws. If you do not have many, I have enough to make up for your lack.
But God says this of David: his heart was perfect toward God. When He goes on to judge all the other kings in the Old Testament, it says their heart was not perfect toward God as David’s was.
God is looking. God is looking. Are there any in whom He can put His heart? Are there any who see His heart?
Are there any for whom this is more than words? Has something of the desire of the Lord dawned on you so much that it has interrupted your life?
I have told you this before: I have a new definition of Christianity. One dear sister prayed here not too many months back and said, “Lord, thank You for interrupting my life.” To me, that is Christianity.
Thank God, He interrupted our lives. Have we seen it? Is it real to us? We need to see the heart of God, and more than that, He wants to put His heart in our heart.
I wonder: are there any Davids today?
There is another extraordinary thing about David. In Acts 13:36—I like the way this is in the New American Standard Version—it says that David “served the purpose of God in his own generation, and then fell asleep.”
What an extraordinary thing to say of a man. Can you imagine if that is what your tombstone said? Can you imagine if that was the eulogy at your funeral, instead of fabricated stories of a good man? I will leave you sisters out.
But if it really was marked in history:
He served the purpose of God in his generation.
You cannot do that unless you see the heart of God, unless it gets hold of you.
Turn back to Psalm 132. I think you begin to see how the heart of God got into David’s heart. Listen to this. This is either a man who needs serious counseling, or something happened and God’s heart got into his heart.
Psalm 132 begins:
Lord, remember David,
And all his afflictions:
How he sware unto the Lord,
And vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob;
Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house,
Nor go up into my bed;
I will not give sleep to mine eyes,
Or slumber to mine eyelids;
Until I find out a place for the Lord,
A habitation for the Mighty One of Jacob.
Here is a man after God’s own heart. I do believe the Lord is looking for Davids today.
I believe there are Davids today. I remember years ago—thirty-four years ago—when the Lord got hold of me, I read a little book that changed my life. It was a little book by T. Austin-Sparks, The Recovery of the Lord’s Testimony and Fullness.
As you can see, I tend to spill things: coffee stains, smudge marks, highlighting, underlining. But this book changed my life.
It was not just the book. Brother Sparks was a peculiar man. He was a man whom God got hold of in his generation, and God changed him. He went against the grain. People misunderstood him and thought he was off—maybe even off his rocker—but something of the heart of God got into that man, and he was a man spoiled from that day onward.
I tell you, there are Davids alive today. I think of our brother Stephen. I only have courage to say this because he is not here. How have we been so blessed? We do not lift up man.
But I think of that verse in Isaiah 6, when it speaks of Isaiah’s revelation and says, “Mine eyes have seen the King.” There is a dear old man, ninety-two years old, caught by a vision.
Have you been caught by the Lord’s heart? Is it just words on the page?
May we respond corporately. This is the heart of God, and this is the end of God: that His heart would be put in your heart. Then He will say of you, “You have served the purpose of God in your generation.”
We not only need to see His heart for His house; we need to see the Builder of the house. Why is this important? For a simple reason:
Only God can build God’s house.
Only God can build God’s house. It is a unique revelation that when we turn to Psalm 127—it is Solomon’s psalm—Solomon was the one who built the temple.
You remember, David was disallowed to build the house of God. God said to David, “What was in your heart was a good thing.” But, “Your son Solomon will build My house.”
Now Solomon said this in Psalm 127:
Except the Lord build the house,
They labor in vain that build it.
Who was the builder? I thought Solomon was the builder. But Solomon knew the secret: God is the Builder of His house.
Sometimes we take too much credit for what He alone can do. Particularly, I want to speak to those who have some responsibility across the many levels. Sometimes you think this burden is on you, and you are the one responsible for building.
But the second thing we need to see is the Builder of the house.
What did the Lord Jesus say when He had them at Caesarea Philippi in Matthew 16? He said:
I will build My church;
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
This was the Lord’s own declaration:
I will build My church;
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
I cannot tell you, dear friends, how many times I have been grateful that the Lord added that last phrase. Can you imagine if the Lord had said, “I will build My church,” full stop? It would not be nearly as encouraging.
But when the Lord says, “I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail,” is that not amazing?
I have told people before what I do. You are probably sick of hearing about engineers. You would like some artist to stand up here and explain what they do. But what I do is pretty simple: it is worst-case engineering.
What we are supposed to do—we do not always succeed—is take the worst possible combination of loads that a building can be subject to, whether it is occupancy loads, dead loads, wind loads, hurricane force, or seismic loads from earthquakes.
We have to manipulate these things. Do not ask me how we do it; I am not sure I know. I just go to work every day. We are to manipulate these things into the absolute worst possible combination.
I have seen one hundred combinations on building sheets. Personally, you may think that is a little ridiculous, but it is worst case, so that if the building stands in that worst case, you know your job was done.
But let me tell you a dirty little secret: we do not do worst-case engineering. There is one little exception—tornadoes.
You heard it from a structural engineer: you are on your own. If you see a tornado coming, do not trust the designer. In case of tornado, run. Better yet, find a low hole in the ground. Forget the building.
But the Lord Jesus is different. The Lord Jesus said:
I will build My church;
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Is that not good news? We need to see the Builder, or we might become discouraged and think that somehow, some way, this thing will not be done. This is good news.
Not only that, to ensure that this building is built, the Lord Jesus gave everything for this building to be built.
There is a phrase often spoken concerning those who serve and die in war: “All give some, but some give all.” I remember a young volunteer fireman in Chesterfield County who was killed in an accident, and that was the eulogy in the paper:
All give some,
But some give all.
Our Lord Jesus gave all. Read Philippians 2. He humbled Himself. Found in fashion as a man, He further humbled Himself to death on the cross.
It is no wonder God gave Him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess, to the glory of God, that Jesus is Lord.
We need to see the Builder of the house.
I thought of another story. Have any of you been to New York City and seen the Brooklyn Bridge? It was built in 1883. It was a pretty big deal. It was the longest suspension bridge at that time in history, and it was the first steel-wire suspension bridge.
The builders gave everything for it. Today, builders do not give everything; you hardly know your builder. But the real difference is when the builder gives all to ensure that the building is completed and the promise is kept.
The builder was John Roebling. He was both architect and builder. You think back to that phrase in Hebrews 11:10: “Whose builder and maker is God.”
At the beginning, John Roebling never saw the bridge built. He injured his foot and died of tetanus. Then his son came along to ensure that it was built. He went down in the deep caissons and contracted caisson disease, or the bends.
He was bedridden in an apartment overlooking the construction of the bridge. From a sickbed, he sent his wife, and she took orders out to those who worked. They saw that that structure was built. That wife was the very first to walk across that bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Now, this pales in comparison to what our Lord Jesus did. He gave all.
I do not know if it has dawned on us that God came and died for us. You would think, if I were doing this, it would be different. You would say, “Gabriel, step up to the plate. Your call.” No.
John read that verse this morning:
For God so loved the world,
That He gave His only begotten Son.
He gave all. This is the reason the building will be built.
Now I am going to stop here, because what I have to share next time, whenever next time is, is that we need to see the house built.
This is not just some theory. This is living every day, functioning in the locality, being related to one another in Christ. I believe that deserves more time than we have.
So pray for me. Some people said I did not get very specific. I may step on a few toes, but that is okay. I have toes too; you step right back.
But we need to see, first of all, the heart of God for His house. If you see it, it will change your life.
Secondly, we need to respond and allow that heart to be put in us. Thirdly, we need to see the Builder of the house.
Lord, we come to You. We thank You for Your mercies. We are asking You, Lord Jesus, if You would open our eyes to see the heart of God.
I do not want to be one who lives this life and lives out my days, and that never penetrated my heart.
So we all say today—and we want to take a few moments and wait on You together—we want to be Davids.
Lord, find here among us Davids who say to God:
I will not give sleep;
I will not give slumber;
I will not,
Until You have a place to dwell,
Habitations for the Mighty One of Jacob.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.