Intense already, and today is kind of like hitting the wall in the marathon. You know, we’re getting to that place where our natural strength runs out, and yet the Lord has so much to give us today.
Father, we’re glad that we don’t have to live in our natural strength. We’re so glad that we belong to You, that we are spiritual men and women. Lord, we ask You, by Your Holy Spirit, to fill us, to enable us, to quicken us, Lord, to increase our capacity even today to be hearing from You, to be receiving from You, Lord, to be storing up in our hearts that which You will bring fruit from later on.
Help us, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Last night I talked about the personal side—our individual walks with the Lord—and today I want to talk more about the corporate side of building the Lord’s house.
A couple of things I want to say right at the beginning: what I’m not doing, what I’m not saying.
I’m a CPA, and I have to keep up with tax-law changes. Most people don’t find tax law very interesting to read. You have to be kind of weird, I guess. But the thing I find most interesting is reading sales-tax changes every year—sales taxes, state by state. It’s amazing the variety of things that states pass.
And you can see who spends the dollars getting lobbyists up to Nashville and getting their calls put before the state Congress. It always cracks me up to see a little change like this:
The local sales tax rate is 2.5%.
But exception number 1342: if you happen to be an international overnight package-delivery service with your international headquarters based in the most southwestern county of the state, and if you have more than X thousand employees in that county, and if you have more than X number of aircraft on the ground in Tennessee at any point in time, you are hereby exempt from that local sales-tax rate on aircraft purchases.
And I think, why didn’t they just say, “FedEx doesn’t have to pay sales tax when they buy an airplane”? You know, they took up all this space that everybody from Memphis to Kingsport has to read, and it applies to one company in Memphis.
Well, I’m going to be talking about the Lord’s building work. I’m going to be talking about what it looks like when people give themselves to build together in such a way that the Lord’s eternal purpose is expressed on the earth.
What I’m not saying is, “Well, here’s our list, and we’re going to go down and mark out everybody that doesn’t fit. Let’s look all around the world and, oh, what do you know? There’s one group that fits all the discussion. Well, what do you know? It’s us. We’re the work of God on the earth in this generation.” I’m not saying that.
The Lord is a big God. He has people all over the earth, a very few of whom we know and most of whom we do not know. Most of His work is hidden. It will only be revealed in eternity.
But there is a plumb line, and I do want to be faithful to hold up that plumb line.
What I don’t want to do is turn us into a little army of arrogant, judgmental people who go out feeling like, “Thank You, God, that I’m not like other men.”
Everything Kit said yesterday about how we regard our brothers and sisters, how we treat our brothers and sisters—those things apply most practically to those that we’re most joined to, most committed to, those that we live our lives with. But the body of Christ is one.
Our brothers and sisters in every place, with every variation of vision, are our brothers and sisters. There is gold, there is silver, and there is preciousness. We need to be those who have the Lord Jesus’ mind and heart toward our brothers and sisters, who look for the preciousness—not those who are arrogant and judgmental.
That said, we have given a week of our lives, at expense—expense in every sense of the word, expense in every part of our lives—to be here, to sit at the Lord’s feet, to say, “Lord, I have a little vision. I have some understanding. Lord, would You give me more? Would You increase my vision of Your purpose, of Your ways? Would You show me how I can be more fruitful in the building of Your house and that which is on Your heart?”
We want that vision increased, and we want it clarified. I want to be faithful to do my little part to say, it’s the Word of God, by the Spirit of God, that is the plumb line that shows us the heart of God and the ways of God.
The first half of my time is what would seem to be called introduction, so it’s not introduction. But it’s background. I want to talk about three specific things that are background to our going to the Scriptures together.
The first is this: I talked last night about the fact that humanism is, humanly speaking, the air that we breathe in this age. This is the deception of the age, the characteristic of the age, the religion of the age.
We talked about that at the individual level, but it is just as pervasive when you come to the corporate aspect of the church.
I went to seminary. I graduated from seminary over twenty years ago. When I was in seminary, the rage of the day was a thing called the church-growth movement.
Now, someone tell me what the church-growth movement is focused on. Come on, you guys are astute. The growth of the church. I knew you guys were sharp.
So, yeah, the church-growth movement is all about church growth. But, of course, there are some kinds of growth you can’t really monitor, measure, and quantify. So it’s the kind of growth that you can measure and quantify. It’s numbers. It’s money. It’s buildings. It’s all the visible stuff.
But here’s the thing: that’s always been there. People have always been focused on the external, focused on what they can see and what they can measure. But the thing that was new about the church-growth movement, which really began about thirty years ago or so, was this.
The church-growth movement says, “You know, the important thing is growth. It’s numbers. It’s increase in this measurable sort of way. But how we get from here to there doesn’t matter to the Lord.”
“The church has been too long shackled and hindered by some old-fashioned idea of which things are spiritual ways to do things and which things are worldly ways to do things. Look, the world around us has found wonderful ways to do things. We ought to take advantage of that. We ought to be unshackled from our old-fashioned ideas and use what works.”
So the church-growth movement was very pragmatic. It was, “Whatever works, use it.” If corporate America has found an efficient way to organize and accomplish a corporate goal, borrow that. If Wall Street has figured out great ways to raise money, use it.
Whatever works. The end is all that’s important. The means—the Lord leaves that up to us just to kind of figure out the best we can. Whatever works best is what we ought to use.
So that was the new thing about the church-growth movement: this idea of, “Man, throw out all your old ideas and think like the world thinks. Figure out what works and use it for God’s glory, for God’s purpose, for God’s end: the growth of the church.”
What’s come out of that over the years? The next phase started about twenty years ago, and that is what we call the seeker-church movement, the seeker-friendly church movement.
The step that that was, was not just “use whatever works,” but it was actually a very distinct theological shift that says, “You know, actually, all the end-time prophecies in here were fulfilled back in 70 AD. We have been, ever since then, in the millennium—obviously not a literal one. We are in the millennium.”
And all that the Lord is waiting on to return is for His church to bring His kingdom—to bring the whole world into His kingdom, or His kingdom to the whole world, however you want to say it.
In other words, the church’s job on the earth, in this millennium that we’re in, is to extend the Lord’s kingdom, His kingship, to all the world.
To do that, we need to make the church more relevant to the world. We need to make the church not only more palatable to the world, but actually desirable to the world. We ought to arrange things in such a way that even the world—the whole world eventually—will come to the logical conclusion: “This is where I want to be. This is what I want to be doing. This is where it’s at. This is where it’s good.”
And so, out of that, you’ve got all the prosperity-gospel stuff. It’s all about a good life now.
Then, beyond that even, we have something called the emergent, or emerging, church movement, which is another step beyond that. It basically says, “You know, I’m not even sure about eternal life, heaven, hell, saved, not saved. I don’t know about all that. What I know is Jesus was a good teacher, and He was all about social gospel. He was all about doing good things for people.”
“So, man, quit preaching all that stuff that divides people and makes people think they’re sinners and all that kind of thing. Just focus on doing good stuff. Get out there and do the soup kitchen. Help the people that have suffered hurricane damage. Get out there and, in the name of Jesus, do good things.”
It has actually thrown off all its moorings to the Scriptures.
Why am I taking up time talking about all that? Because that’s the age we live in. That’s the society that we live in. My understanding, my belief, is that this is simply a corporate manifestation of that same humanism we talked about last night. It is, “Let’s figure out what God wants and let’s do it man’s way.”
But actually, God not only reveals in Scripture that He has a purpose—a single purpose that has been His eternal purpose, the reason He created, the reason He has done everything that He has done—but Scripture also reveals the mind, heart, and character of God, and therefore His ways.
It is not okay with the Lord to do His work man’s way.
Think about the story of Uzzah carrying the ark—David bringing the ark back into Jerusalem. What a good thing, what a wonderful thing. He just did not inquire of the Lord how to do it. So he did it man’s way instead of the way God had clearly revealed that the ark should be carried.
When that cart got upset and the ark was in danger of falling off, Uzzah reached out his hand to steady it and was struck dead.
It is just one clear example from the Scriptures, but the Scriptures make it clear that the Lord cares not only that we do His work, that we be about His purpose, but that we do it in such a way that is in keeping with His character, His heart, and His ways.
The second thing I want to do is talk a little bit about the distinction between Jerusalem and Babylon.
The entire Bible has this underlying theme woven in and out. It appears here and there and all through. Babylon first appears in Genesis 11 as Babel. Jerusalem first appears, in a sense, three chapters later, when Melchizedek, the king of Salem, comes on the scene.
Babylon is finally dealt with in Revelation 17 and Revelation 18. Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God—the New Jerusalem, the city of God, the bride of Christ—in Revelation 19 through Revelation 22.
The entire Bible has this relationship, this distinction, woven through it between Babylon and Jerusalem. Yet outside of people that we would know, like Stephen or Lance, Sonny, and people like that, just in Christianity at large, I don’t know if I have ever heard a message preached about the distinction between Babylon and Jerusalem.
Let me just run through some quick comparisons.
They are alike in some ways. Babylon, as I said last night, is a counterfeit of Jerusalem, so it looks a lot alike. They are both cities. They are both women. They both have great and high walls. A river flows out of Jerusalem; a river runs through and around Babylon.
But that is about where the similarities end. Everything else is really distinction when you see it spiritually.
Jerusalem means “teaching of peace.” Her King is the King of Peace. Babylon—it is interesting; Lance tells us, and I believe him—that in the Babylonian language, in Chaldean, the word for Babel or Babylon is Babel, “gate of God,” “gateway of God.” But in Hebrew, as we know, God’s language, the language He revealed to His people, He clearly calls it Babel: confusion.
So Jerusalem is teaching of peace, whose King is the King of Peace. Babel is confusion, whose king is the father of pride.
Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God. Babel, Babylon, was built from the earth with the intention of reaching heaven.
Jerusalem exists for her King, or her Groom. By the end of the age, when we see her descending at the end of Revelation, she has the glory of God. But Babel is all about the glory of man:
Let us build for ourselves a city.
Let us build for ourselves a tower reaching to heaven.
Let us make a name for ourselves.
Jerusalem is a temple—a dwelling place of God—so that God in her midst is her temple. Babylon is full of temples to what I call little-g gods, many other gods.
Jerusalem is a holy bride made ready for her husband. Her whole focus is not herself. We sing a song, most of you probably know it: “The bride eyes not her garments, but her dear Bridegroom’s face.”
The bride is made ready, but she is not enamored with herself, with her garments, with her readiness. Her focus is her Groom, her Lover.
Babylon is an unclean harlot, committing immoral, indecent acts with the kings of the earth. She is all about herself:
I sit as a queen.
I will not be a widow.
I will not be bereaved.
She takes on the attitude of her king, king of pride, whom you can read about in Ezekiel and Isaiah: “I, I, I.”
Jerusalem is built—her inner character is everything that Kit talked about yesterday: gold, silver, precious stone, pearl—these costly things that have to be worked into our character, little by painful little transforming work, by transforming work. That is what Jerusalem is built of.
Outwardly, she is actually dressed pretty plainly: linen. It is fine linen; it is bright, it is clean, it is even embroidered. But it is linen.
Babylon—her inner character, what she is built of—read it in Genesis 11: mud bricks, baked hard and brittle in the fire, held together by tar, black slimy pitch from a pit. That is her inner character.
But outwardly, she is adorned with all the things that the bride is made of. She is adorned with gold, silver, precious stone, pearl.
So the reality—the bride of Christ, the city of God, the building work of God through the ages—that reality is all about inner character. It is all about the Lord’s transforming work that brings His character into His house. That is us.
But there is a counterfeit. It has existed from Genesis 11. It has existed from the fall of man, basically, and it exists until the end of time, until the bride of Christ is revealed.
Are we in that parenthesis? Are we somewhere between Genesis 11 and Revelation 18? We are.
That means in our day, on this earth, there is a bride being prepared for her Husband, and there is a harlot who is a counterfeit bride, a counterfeit queen, whose inner character is something very different. But externally she looks actually more queenly, more wealthy, more successful than the bride.
In Revelation 18:4, this call goes out before the harlot is finally judged. This call rings out from heaven:
Come out from her, My people,
that you may not participate in her sins
and that you may not receive of her plagues.
Remember, last night, we live in a lukewarm age. We like everybody to be broad and inclusive.
The reality is, there are two women on the earth today: two kingdoms, two systems, if you will. Actually, one of them is a system, and one of them is just life.
If we want to be those who spend the nickel that our life is in a way that counts, in a way that has eternal fruit, in a way that brings eternal glory to the Lord, we have to have some spiritual discernment. We have to know something of the difference between these two—not so that we can judge brothers and sisters who may be in a system, but so that we can come out from that system ourselves in our hearts.
It is mainly a heart matter. I can be wherever I am and, in my heart, basically be in a Babylonian system that stands against the real work of God in my heart and life.
The third thing I will not go into too much detail about, because Chip already told us to get Dana’s message on the Solomon generation, and I feel sure that he talks more about this. But jot down, if you’re taking notes, 1 Kings 3. It is the same chapter that Chip read from about Solomon’s wise judgment, but the first half of the chapter talks about how he got that wisdom.
It is kind of amazing to me. David was a man after God’s heart. God—I already said God has one purpose on His heart. Now it gets revealed progressively. It is the building of His house. It is the city of God. It is the bride for His Son. One eternal purpose.
David was a man after God’s heart from youth, from an early age:
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
One thing I have desired;
that will I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
David was focused. David had one passion, one desire.
When he came to the kingdom finally, many years after he was anointed, many years waiting on the Lord, he finally was king over Judah for seven years. Then he finally became king over all Israel. The first thing he did was take Jerusalem.
He had discerned, “This is the city.” Four hundred years earlier, God had said, “There is one place in all of Israel where I have chosen for My name to dwell.” David discerned by the Spirit, “It’s this place,” and he took it and made it the city of the great King.
God did not let him build a house, but he knew that the most important part of the house was the ark, that which speaks of the Lord Jesus Himself.
He knew somehow—I mean, this is a man who had spent his life with one passion, fellowshipping with the Lord about that one passion, having the Lord’s heart revealed to him. He knew that that ark, that central piece, the thing that the tabernacle and the temple existed for, did not belong at a high place in Gibeon with the tabernacle of Moses.
I do not understand why he did not bring the whole tabernacle of Moses to Jerusalem. What I know is, he brought the important part, the most important part. He brought the ark itself to Jerusalem, constructed a tabernacle for it, and set Asaph and his brothers there to minister before the Lord, before the ark, as each day required.
I cannot imagine that David spent much time going to the high place in Gibeon. But I can imagine that David often strolled across the courtyard and inquired of the Lord before the ark.
That is where Solomon grew up. Solomon grew up seeing his dad’s passion, seeing his dad’s heart, seeing his dad’s focus. He grew up in sight of the tent that David had constructed for the ark of God, which he considered the most important thing in all of Israel.
But by the time Solomon came to the throne, he was a man of somewhat more culture than that, somewhat broader taste than that, somewhat more refinement than that. It says he followed in the ways of his father David, except—except for the one thing.
Except that he still offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.
What did he think about the ark? I do not know. But not enough. It was minimized. The high places were somehow more fulfilling to his religiousness. They were more conducive to an attitude of worship for him.
When he became king, the first thing he did was go to the high place—the great high place at Gibeon, where the tabernacle of Moses was. It had all the history, all the glory, all the furniture, everything. It had the altar, the laver, the lampstand, the table of showbread, the altar of incense. It had everything in it except that which speaks of the Lord Jesus Himself and His headship and His preeminence.
He went there and offered sacrifices. That night, the Lord appeared to him and said, “Ask anything you want.”
He said, “Lord, Your people are so great. I’m so small, so young. Lord, I need an understanding heart. I need wisdom.”
The Lord said, “I’ve given it to you.” And he woke up.
He left Gibeon and went and stood before the ark in Jerusalem and offered sacrifice there. It never again says anything about him going back to the high places until those foreign wives had drawn his heart away and he began to offer sacrifice to other gods.
We have said this so many times. You all know it: you cannot live on your parents’ vision. You cannot live on your brother’s vision or your sister’s vision.
The God of glory must reveal Himself to you and show you how to spend your life in such a way that it is in accordance with His purpose. You cannot take my word for it. You cannot take anybody else’s word for it.
But the Lord loves to reveal Himself to those who will ask humbly, with a childlike attitude.
So those are background things I want you to have in your heart and in your mind as we go to the Scriptures.
Basically, I want to do two things now. I want to talk about what it looks like, just real practically, when a group of people give themselves to building the Lord’s house.
I said last night that Ephesians seems to be the highest revelation of the church in the Scriptures. Ephesians 3 is where it talks about God’s eternal purpose, this purpose of the ages.
It was such a life-changing thing for me when I heard that term and heard it with new eyes, new ears. When I realized, “You mean there’s something God has had on His heart since before creation? You mean, before there was sin that needed to be redeemed from, God had something else on His heart?”
I grew up just believing that redemption of sinners was the purpose of God. To realize that He had an eternal purpose long before sin, even before creation, was life-changing for me.
That is Ephesians 3. It specifically says that this eternal purpose, hidden in God for ages, is now being revealed. It is to be made manifest, to be shown forth, by the church.
Then from that, it goes right into what we call, in our chapter divisions, Ephesians 4, and begins to show us what it looks like when the church of God is living by the life of Jesus Christ and showing forth this eternal purpose of God.
So I want to spend a few minutes going through the first half of Ephesians 4 and just talking a little bit about it.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.
And here is what that looks like:
With all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love.
Now, I have never met a Christian who did not know that we are supposed to be humble, gentle, patient, forbearing, and loving.
But I know that I would like those things to be a way that I act in front of you. The Lord says these are first and foremost inner characteristics. This is character. This is who you are. It comes out in how you treat one another, how you act.
When everything is kind of going nicely, it is easy to have the appearance that we are all humble, that we are all gentle with one another, patient, forbearing, loving. “Isn’t the Lord’s house great? I love the saints.”
It is when trouble comes. It is when difficulty comes. It is when you and I do not agree about what the Lord is speaking for the assembly. It is when you and I have a difference of understanding about the Lord’s Word—important stuff. I am not talking about little side issues. I am talking about big stuff.
“This is important. I’m right. I’ve got the Scripture to back me up, and you’re not walking in the truth. This is important. You’re hindering the Lord’s work.”
It is when you have offended me. You have hurt me. You have disrespected me. You have minimized me.
Those are the times when our hearts are shown forth. Those are the times when we say, “Am I actually giving myself to the Lord in such a way that I can be part of His building work? Am I actually yielding myself to His transforming work so that His character is being formed in me?”
“Is there any reality to my appearance of humility, my appearance of gentleness, patience, long-suffering, and love? Or is it all just façade?”
Well, praise the Lord. I am so glad He brings the trials, the struggles, the hardships. I am glad He allows the offense. I am glad He allows it because it shows me what has been done and what still needs to be done, so that I do not live in a dreamland.
So that I am not building with wood, hay, and straw and making this great edifice and feeling good about it all. I am so thankful that He comes and reveals our hearts to us now, while there is time for repentance and restoration, so that we can again open our hearts to Him.
“Lord, look at my heart. Lord, look how I am. Oh, Lord, this one for whom You died, this one that I would resent, that I would trivialize, that I would separate myself from—Lord, oh, Lord.”
You must increase.
I must decrease.
Being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
There are a few things in Scripture that I come to, and I can just kind of go, “Does anybody in the whole Christian world read this verse?” There are just a few things that I think, “I do not see it anywhere.” It seems like that little verse has just kind of been erased from everybody’s Bible.
What is the unity of the Spirit? It goes on to expand on it:
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, Who is over all and through all and in all.
There is only one body of Christ. Amen. Not even just on the earth right now—every saint who has ever lived is part of the one body of Christ. That great cloud of witnesses.
The portion of the body that is on the earth right now is the small part. Kit often talks about the feet: it is the lowest, it is the least, and it is the part that is touching the earth right now. It is small compared to all those who have gone on before us. There is one body.
That is because there is one Spirit who gives us new birth. We have one life by Whom we live.
Paul did not say, “By the Holy Spirit, fight for the unity of the Spirit. Create the unity of the Spirit. Pretend that you have unity of spirit.”
The Lord Jesus, in John 17, is about to go to the cross. He is about to endure the most unthinkable, unimaginable agony of soul and spirit that anyone in all of eternity has ever, or will ever, endure.
There is no way we can comprehend the eternal, sinless, pure, righteous Son of God being made sin for you and me—taking on Himself, into Himself, every vile, filthy, wicked, sinful thought, action, word, deed ever committed or ever to be committed.
It is all taken into Him: not just the sins, but sin. Becoming sin for us, separated from the One with Whom He has had eternal, unbroken, precious fellowship.
That is what He is looking at. That is what He is headed for. Yet with all that ahead of Him, the cry of His heart in John 17 is, “Oh, Father, that they may be one.”
“Father, just as You and I are one—with that unity: them and Me, Me and them, and Me and You—oh, Father, would You bring them into this unity that You and I have enjoyed for all of eternity?”
In the end, He paid the price.
A few days later, He appeared to one hundred twenty or so gathered in an upper room, and He breathed on them—literally breathed in them—and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Those one hundred twenty could wait on Him as one man, because that prayer had been answered. He paid the price. They were one by His Spirit.
Then a few days later, those one hundred twenty, having waited on the Lord as one man, were gathered together, and the Spirit of God came rushing out of heaven like a mighty wind, baptized them with the Spirit, and three thousand more were saved.
By that Spirit, three thousand one hundred twenty could be before the Lord as one man, having unity of heart and mind because they lived by one life. They had one birth.
We live in a muddled time of history, but spiritual reality is spiritual reality. It does not change based on the situation on the ground level.
The Lord said, “Be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit.”
What is the testimony of Christianity in our day? Division, division, division; separation, delineation, denomination.
We separate from each other on the basis of doctrine and theology. We separate from each other on the basis of worship style, how we organize church leadership, how we baptize people. You name it.
We have a million ways of dividing from one another, separating ourselves, delineating ourselves from our brothers and sisters. “Oh, you are a so-and-so.” “Well, I’m a such-and-such.”
Be diligent to preserve that unity that Jesus bought at unthinkable price: the unity of the Spirit.
There is one body. We read these next several verses. I am going to skip down to verse 11:
He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.
It is pretty inherent, I think, in the heart of fallen man. I said last night, we are lukewarm. “I do not want to be spiritual. I do not want to be holy. I do not want to be radical. I’m not really comfortable being around you if you are.”
But there is something inherent in our hearts that recognizes that it is good for people to be religious, good for people to be dedicated. “I’d really appreciate it if you would be that, so that I don’t have to be.”
The last of the eleven or twelve apostles was not dead before this thing had begun to creep into the church—this kind of separation between the gifted ones and everyone else. But in the second and third centuries, that just kind of increased.
Then along came good old Constantine, who was so grateful to the God of the cross for having given him victory in battle and made him emperor that he declared the whole Roman Empire Christian. By decree. “You’re a Christian, right?”
Boy, did everything move into hyperspeed then. Because everything pagan just got renamed, whitewashed, dressed up, and now it was Christian. So we had all the temples, all the priests, all the holidays, all the everything. Yesterday they were pagan; today they are Christian.
From then on, the church has been plagued with this idea that it is the gifted ones who are called to do the work of the ministry and to build up the body of Christ.
That is not what Ephesians 4 says. This highest revelation of what it looks like when people on the earth—people like you and I—actually give themselves to the building work of God, actually give themselves to live by the life of Jesus so that the eternal purpose of God can be manifested, shown forth to the principalities and powers.
When that happens, it says these gifted ones the Lord has given to the church are equipping the saints for the work of service, so that the body of Christ will be built up.
I do not know any place that does any of these things well—certainly not perfectly. But it is important to the Lord that His gifted ones not be occupying a place of prominence and preeminence, trying by themselves to build up the body of Christ and do the work of service. It will never happen in any kind of fullness, in any kind of sufficiency.
I will never, I am sure, on this earth, be able to get my mind around, be able to comprehend, how even every Christian who has ever lived, whoever will live, all together, all the work that the Lord has done in us, can completely express the infinite life of the Lord Jesus.
But certainly no one of us can, and certainly no few of us can.
The Lord has specifically designed it so that each local assembly is not fullness in any sense, but so that each local assembly can be, as John used to say, a microcosm of the body of Christ—just in miniature, an expression of what is on the Lord’s heart.
That can only happen to the degree that the gifted ones among us are coming underneath the saints: equipping, building up, encouraging, strengthening, correcting, leading.
But not the world’s kind of leadership—not at the top of the pyramid, not everyone existing for my ministry. The Lord’s leadership is totally upside down from a corporate pyramid. It is totally upside down.
Those who are strong come underneath and bear with the weak. Those who are gifted with many talents come to those who have fewer talents or newer talents—the younger ones, the weaker ones, the less-gifted ones—and pour out their life so that these may come into maturity, the fullness of what the Lord has for them.
In the process, the whole church is built up, and the Lord Jesus is expressed in a way that never could be done otherwise.
Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
All these next few verses are talking about this growth, this building up. We talked about that some last night at the individual level. Our lives are not meant to be static.
In a place where the Lord’s people have given themselves to one another, to be built together, to express Him on the earth in a visible way, there will be this growth. There will be this character transformation going on. There will be this: “I am decreasing; He is increasing. We are decreasing; He is increasing.”
I do not want to dishonor my dad or any of his friends, but I am just going to tell you. I moved out of my dad’s house twenty-nine years ago. He moved back in with me about a year and a half ago—fourteen months ago—because he has Alzheimer’s.
One of the things that has driven me to the Lord time and time and time again in these last couple of years has been seeing a man who has spent his life as a minister in the Lord’s house, there every time the church doors opened, hearing the Word of God preached week in and week out his whole seventy-eight years, who is the same man that I knew thirty-five years ago.
I do not mean that in the right way.
Many of his friends I knew thirty and thirty-five years ago. Some of them now call to talk to him, and I get to talk to them, or they come and visit. Some of these have been gloriously transformed since I knew them thirty and thirty-five years ago.
They are so much more Christ-like. They show me the sweetness of the Lord Jesus in ways that I never saw thirty years ago. Others seem to me to have been stuck in time, like thirty-five years has not passed. They are the same person: the same fears, the same unbelief, the same doubts, the same whatever.
That does not make me despise them. It makes me cry out to the Lord in terror: “Oh, God.”
You must increase.
I must decrease.
I do not want to come to the end of my days and stand before Him and be who I am right now in the natural. I am not who I was twenty years ago, praise God, by His grace, by His mercy, by His work. But I am not who I want to wind up being either.
If I have another day on the earth, I want it to be a day of yieldingness to Him, that as I deny myself and take up my cross and follow Him, His character would be worked more into me.
We ought to be changing. We ought to be helping one another to change into the image of Jesus—not just the outward stuff, but the real inward character.
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, Who is the head, even Christ, from Whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
Two things I will lump together here: the headship of Christ and the function of every member.
I have been in six or eight different assemblies during my lifetime, and every one of those preached about the headship of Christ. Exactly one of those actually allows the direct headship of Jesus Christ when the saints gather together.
That strikes me as unusual. We have one hundred sixty-eight hours in a week. Jesus is Head over His body one hundred sixty of those. But when the saints all gather—when the body of Christ actually gathers together in one place, in the name of Jesus, at His feet—well, it is just not practical to actually give Him His place of direct headship in that situation.
It is dangerous. It is real risky. It really ruins the quality of our gatherings, I will tell you. They are up and they are down. We are back and forth. Boy, we are hitting it, we are following the Lord, we are hearing the Holy Spirit. Then all of a sudden some brother comes in with something way off the wall. “Whoa, we’ve got to get back.” It is just not practical.
So Jesus can be Head of His body the other one hundred sixty hours, but when we gather together as His body, “I’m sorry, we have to have a few guys. We have to delegate this to a few guys and let them get clear on it a few days ahead of time so we can get it in the bulletin.”
I am not trying to make light. I am not trying to be sarcastic. But I do want to make the point. I do want us to go to the Lord and say, “Lord, what about this?”
“Lord, are You the Head of Your body? Is that one hundred sixty-eight hours a week, or something less than that? Is that sometimes directly when I’m by myself at work, at home, whatever, but only delegated when we’re together as Your body? Is this important to You, Lord?”
Every joint supplies. The proper working of each individual part. Well, there is the rub. We are all learning, we are all growing, and finding the proper working of my part—man, what a slow process that seems to be. Two steps forward and one step back, and you have to put up with me while I learn.
I get to put up with you while you learn. As you put up with me, you know what gets formed in you? The character of Christ: patience, long-suffering, gentleness. Nothing is lost.
Yeah, it is risky. It is inefficient. But nothing is lost, because through the process, the Lord is actually doing His work in each of us.
You can turn to Nehemiah 3 if you want. When we start to look at this matter of what it looks like, I come back time and time again to one of the foundational aspects of being able to build the Lord’s house: committed relationship to one another.
I have had two dear brothers, whom I love greatly and respect greatly, ask me in the past year, basically, “Where do you get this thing about the local church being such a big deal?”
“I mean, the body of Christ is one. I’m one with every brother and sister I meet. I can be building the Lord’s house—the Lord’s house is universal—and I can be building that with any brother and sister I meet. What’s the deal about being committed to a specific group of people and feeling like that’s where the main building work of your life is going on? Where do you get that in Scripture?”
That has driven me back to the Scripture and back to the Lord to say, “Lord, am I missing it? Lord, I do not want to be wasting my life. I do not want to be living for something that is not You, that is not Your way.”
The conclusion I have come to is—well, let me say it this way.
If I got Jared’s anatomy and physiology book—that’s for those who are in the medical radiography program—and I said, “All right, buddy, show me where in here it says that if you want to be a good medical radiographer, you’ve got to keep that heart beating and those lungs working. Show me where it says that.”
I do not think you would find it in there. I doubt it says that. These are parts of the involuntary—what is the word for that, those systems that you do not have to think about? Autonomic, thank you. These are parts of the autonomic systems of the body. You do not have to think about it. They are automatic. They just happen. They just work by God’s doing.
I do not have to tell my heart, “Beat, beat, beat, beat.” I do not have to concentrate, “Deep breath. Exhale.” It just happens.
Corporateness was part of the air of the Bible. It was part of the air of the New Testament. It was part of who they were and how they thought—not just in the Lord, even. Most societies of most times, from the beginning of time, most cultures and most societies until the last two or three hundred years, have been very corporate in their mentality and lifestyle.
Everything Paul wrote, he was writing to a specific assembly, the one assembly of Christians in that city.
When he wrote to people about their life, he did not have to explain who he meant when he said, “One another, one another, one another.” They knew who he meant: these guys on either side of me, these guys I am stuck with. It is the Christians in my city.
Most people were born and lived and died within, I do not know, five or ten miles of the same spot. Some of them within five or ten years. But we live in a world where the world is one big shrinking place. We travel, we communicate, we see everything that is going on everywhere, we think.
We are very mobile, independent, this and that and the other. But that is not the air that the New Testament was written in. The air they breathed was a corporate air.
Paul did not have to explain himself. But listen to some of these. Sonny gave a message back in September here, and he gave us some verses. He said these verses reveal to us the spiritual disposition of builders of the Lord’s house. I am just going to read them real quick.
If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.
So then, we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.
Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
Bear one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ.
Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed.
Some Christian in Ghana? Some Christian in Colombia? No—the ones near me, the ones whose dirt I can see and be offended by. You ought to wash one another’s feet.
There is this matter of committed relationship.
Sonny said, “I’m not committed to saints in Memphis.” I think we all understood what he meant. The Lord does not say, “I’m going to place you one place, and that’s where you’re going to die, buddy. Don’t even think about anything else.”
The Lord is our Sovereign. He has absolute authority, absolute right, at any time, to take any of us from where we are to somewhere else. It is His prerogative.
My job is, while I am where the Lord has me, to pour out my life like a drink offering, to waste my life on the brothers and sisters He has given me. I am not to be casting about for somewhere that is a little more lively, a little more orthodox, a little more whatever feels good to me.
I am to get clear where the Lord has me and waste my life there until, and unless, He says, “Now, for My purpose, you move here.”
Now, that is tricky even to say, even to give that possibility, because we are slippery. Man: “Oh, I feel the Lord calling me to leave this bunch of losers and go on to somewhere better, where my ministry will be more appreciated and fruitful.”
I cannot give you the chapter and verse where the Lord deals with these things. He could have prophetically looked into the day and age we live in and addressed it, but He did not—not in any real clear, specific way.
But the New Testament is full of the sorts of things that I just read. If you understand Paul was not talking to the church universal most of the times when he said those things—they are true of the church universal. I should wash the feet of every believer I come in contact with at work, in my neighborhood, in my relationships. I should love, bear with, encourage—all those things are true.
But they were written to brothers and sisters who knew who they had been knit together with, who they had been planted with, and they expected to live and die there.
It is in that kind of commitment, that kind of context of commitment, that the Lord is able to do His deepest work in me.
As long as I am kind of being superficial with you, as long as I am holding back, as long as I am reserving the right not to be fully exposed, not to be fully hurt, then there are parts of my heart that are not really open to the Lord’s touch.
Because it is through you. It is through the hurts, it is through the misunderstandings, it is through the conflict, that I am changed and that the Lord is expressed and revealed.
I am going to take just a few minutes and look at Nehemiah 3 and talk about what is my place, what is our place, in this building work.
Nehemiah 3 is one of those chapters that, if you read it like a genealogy, you just kind of hurry through it. Like most people read genealogies: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, let’s get back to something good here. Let’s get back to the historical narrative that is a little more interesting.”
It seems like just a lot of names and a lot of repetition. But it is so full. It is so rich. We could talk about so many aspects of just what is here in this one chapter.
I hope that, as we leave this conference this weekend, as we go back to our homes, whether that is Memphis or somewhere else, we will not say, “Okay, well, that was good. Thank You, Lord. Now I know something more about building the Lord’s house,” and that will be the end of that.
I hope you will go to these books that we keep mentioning and not spending much time in, and ask the Lord, “Lord, would You open these things to me in a new way? Would You speak to me? Would You build from the foundation of what has been given to me this weekend and reveal things to me I never saw in Your Word before?” He will do it.
I just want to look at the aspect of our place in the building.
Then Eliashib the high priest arose with his brothers the priests and built the Sheep Gate.
There is a place for everybody. That is the emphasis. There is a place for every one of us in the building work of God’s house. No one is too small. No one’s ministry is too out there. There is a place for everybody.
So this first one, Eliashib and his brothers building the Sheep Gate—I thought, how appropriate that this would be the beginning of this chapter. We are sheep. All of us, the Lord’s people, are sheep.
We need those who make a way for us to come into the Lord’s house, into the Lord’s city, in the Lord’s presence. That can be anything from evangelism—we need those who bring the Lord’s sheep to Him—to those encouragers in the body of Christ who bring us in.
It is a twenty-four-seven sort of thing. There are some among us—you all know people—whose lives are just so gifted in encouraging weak ones and troubled ones. It is such a gift to the body of Christ, such a ministry, to be able to build a gate by which the Lord’s sheep can come into all that He is doing and saying.
They hung its doors. They consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred and the Tower of Hananel.
And next to him—here is this all the way through this chapter—you see this: “next to him,” “next to him,” “next to him”; fifteen times. “After him,” “after him,” “after him.” The wall is all about the relationships of God’s people.
Built with stones, not bricks; held together by that which every joint supplies, not by tar. Next to, next to; after, after. We are locked arm in arm in this building work.
Now the sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate.
I really think of evangelists when I think of that—those who are fishers of men. Of course, there is a sense in which every one of us should be ready at all times to give an answer for the hope that is within us. We all ought to be evangelists in our own way.
But I believe the Lord has gifted some of us. That is our motivation. That is the thing that burns in our heart. I look around the room and see some of you who I know—that is your motivation, that is your gifting. You just live to tell people about the Lord, about the gospel, to bring people into the Lord’s kingdom.
You are a fisher of men. Praise the Lord. Build that gate.
Do not be sidetracked by the fact that the rest of us do not have that gift and are not walking even in faithfulness as much as we should be. Do not be discouraged from having your ministry because it is not what everyone else is doing. You build. You fish. You make that gate for those lost ones to come into the city of God.
Next to him the Tekoites made repairs, but their nobles did not support the work of their masters.
“I want to be involved in the building work of God, but my parents just do not understand what I am doing. They just do not get it. They really want me to be doing what they are doing. So what can I do?”
You can be a Tekoite. You can respond to that stirring of Spirit that the Lord has done in you, and you can say, “I will build.”
Actually, they show up again in verse 27. These who were not supported by their nobles, who were not supported by those who should have been not only cheering them on but aiding them—not only did they not stay back in Tekoa and say, “Oh, well.”
They came and they built. When they finished the section that they had been assigned, they said, “Well, it’s not done yet, but we’re finished. Can we do something else?” They found another section, and they built another section. Praise the Lord.
There is no limit to how much your life can count for when you are doing what the Lord has given you to do.
Joiada the son of Paseah and Meshullam the son of Besodeiah repaired the Old Gate.
There are some among us who bring such life, such fresh perspective, such newness into the assembly, and I am so thankful for that. There are some whom the rest of us tend to view as kind of old and stuffy, killjoys, who are always bringing us back to the plumb line.
Paul said, “I commend you that you kept to the traditions that I gave you.” There are some things that are right. Old, usually in the Scriptures, is not a desirable term; it usually speaks of natural life as opposed to new life. But there are things in the church that are given by God.
His Word is true and unchangeable. It is a plumb line to us. He gives us revelation of His ways that we are to walk in. Our human nature is just to be like puppies—we are here and there.
Praise God for some who can bring us back to the things that we ought to be brought back to.
Next to them Melatiah the Gibeonite and Jadon the Meronothite, the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah, also made repairs for the official seat of the governor of the province beyond the River.
Who was the governor in these days? Nehemiah. Was he there? Was he building? Absolutely.
He is not mentioned anywhere in Nehemiah 3, but you read the rest of the book: everything he had was focused on this building work. He was not standing back saying, “Okay, now how is it going today? Okay, I’m going to get my progress report. Okay, keep up the good work.”
Everything he had—he was sleeping in his clothes. He was carrying his weapons to the water. All his servants were living with him in Jerusalem and given to the work.
The people of God were selling land cheap. The real-estate market was kind of like it is right now. People were having to mortgage everything. He had wealth. He had money. He could have bought up a bunch. He said, “I didn’t buy any land.”
“In fact, I used my resources to redeem what other people were having foreclosed on so I could give it back to them. I had a governor’s allowance of food given to me. It was my right. The governors before me all took it. But it cost tax dollars to my people, the Lord’s people, so I didn’t take it.”
“In fact, out of my own resources, I fed one hundred fifty people every day at my table.”
He was there. He was as dirty and dusty as the rest of them, with his sleeves rolled up. But he was not building his own seat. He was the delegated authority of the Lord, of the King, but he was not beautifying his own place. He was not making room for himself.
He was somewhere working in anonymity, coming underneath, equipping.
But some others had it on their heart to make place for him. They said, “You know, this is the delegated authority of the King here in our midst. It is to our benefit that we have a place for him to dwell.”
In the church, those who have some authority from the Lord, some authority for the Lord’s people, should not be making their own place. Praise the Lord when they do not.
That does not mean they have no place. Praise the Lord when some others give of themselves and lay down their life to make place for the Lord’s delegated authority.
Next to him Uzziel the son of Harhaiah of the goldsmiths made repairs.
The people of Israel—I do not know what they were in Babylon—but most of them, as they came back to the land, were farmers, herdsmen, maybe a few merchants. Definitely a few merchants.
To me, goldsmith sounds like a cut above, just in socioeconomic status. “I’m a goldsmith. I’m a fine artisan.” There were carpenters there. There were stonemasons there. These were goldsmiths, working with stone—big, heavy, smash-your-finger stone—digging them out of piles of dusty rubble and finding a way to fit them into a wall for God’s people.
Next to him Hananiah, one of the perfumers, made repairs.
These days, perfume making, I am sure, is all by recipe and machinery. But what was a perfume maker’s most important asset?
You know what it is like to be in a construction site. You know what the enemies of God called this place? They said, “You are going to try to revive this place from the dusty rubble? Are you kidding? Burned gates, piles of dusty rubble where the wall has been broken down and left for, by this point, one hundred seventy years or so.”
If I had been a perfumer, I would have been tempted to think, “I believe I’ll just kind of hang back awhile out of the dust ring. I’ll busy myself in another city for just fifty-two days and let them do all that dusty work. This is my livelihood at stake. It’s my career. I cannot endanger my family like that.”
Praise the Lord, there was a place for the goldsmiths. There was a place for the perfumers, and they took it.
Next to him Rephaiah the son of Hur, the official of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs.
This man was a political leader, ruler over half the city. But he ruled the way Nehemiah ruled: he rolled up his sleeves and got in there and did the work.
Next to them Jedaiah the son of Harumaph made repairs opposite his house.
If you were someone dwelling in another city and coming to Jerusalem to build, there was not much direct relationship between building the city wall and building your own house.
But if you lived in Jerusalem, the two could actually benefit one another. This man built in front of his own house.
Sonny rightly called us back to the Lord’s clear command that if anyone does not hate father and mother and wife and children, brothers and sisters, he cannot be My disciple.
But, as Chip mentioned yesterday, there is a right way to make the Lord King, sovereign, preeminent—hating every natural relationship in comparison, and every time there is a conflict choosing the Lord over natural affinity and relationship.
Yet when we dwell in the Lord’s house, it is not separate from my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my children. Everything I do to build up the Lord’s house actually builds my own family, and everything I do to build my family actually builds the Lord’s house, if that is where I am living. I am so thankful for that.
Malchijah the son of Harim and Hasshub the son of Pahath-moab repaired another section and the Tower of Furnaces.
I do not ever want to be the one who brings the fire of affliction into your life. But sometimes I will be.
I do not like that. I do not like when you bring the fire of affliction into my life. But the house of God is a place of fire and affliction. It is a place of refining, of testing, of dross being burned away and gold being purified.
Praise the Lord for those who equip the Lord’s house—not enough; I think you understand what I mean.
Next to him Shallum the son of Hallohesh, the official of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs, he and his daughters.
Daughters, again in Scripture, speak of fair ones, fine ones—something that we think of maybe with a negative connotation in our society, and I am sorry about that. The weaker vessel. The ones more out of sight, behind the scenes.
You do not find many women in genealogies, so the ones who are there are very instructive, very important. Here is a man building with his daughters. I would not expect that building the city wall was considered women’s work.
But these women had a heart to build, and there was a place for them. There is a place for every one of us. This is not a male-female thing. This is spiritual reality, no matter how weak we are, no matter how hidden we are, how far from view, how far down the list of people’s thought.
There is another guy we will not get to in here who is the sixth son of someone. He would not have made it into any genealogy. They do not usually go that far. It is usually the oldest, the oldest, the oldest, the eldest. Every once in a while all the kids are named, but here is the sixth son.
Who was he? What chance did he have of being anybody? He had a place in the building of God’s house, the building of God’s city, and he took it.
There are gates from the valley—those low places, places of darkness and despair that we go through. Praise the Lord for those who open up a way for us, for God’s people, so that when we are in that valley, that low place, we can be ushered in.
So often when we are in a low place, we come to the city of God and all we see is this great high wall. It is impossible. There is no way in.
Praise the Lord for those who build a gate from that valley.
Praise the Lord for those who build gates by which the ashes of our lives can be carried out—that which is residual from the altar, from what we give to the Lord and He burns up. It needs to be cleansed from the city. It needs to be carried out.
So there is the Refuse Gate, the gate of ashes, and on and on.
There is a place for you in the building of God’s house, in the building of God’s city, in the preparation of the Lord Jesus’ bride. No one is too small. No one is too weak. No one is too despised in the eyes of the world. No one is too good. No one is too tied up with other things to have a place.
You can be any of those things and not take your place. You cannot be so much any one of those things that you do not have a place.
The Lord has made your place in the building of His house, the building of His city, the preparation of His bride. Only you can take it, and only you can refuse it. No one can refuse it to you. No one can take it from you.
May we be those who take what is given to us, take that place. It is costly. It costs everything.
Ezra tells us that the building of the house was completed. It tells us the month and the day, and if you compare it to Haggai, when they restarted again, it actually took, according to John Saunders, whose math I always trusted, one thousand six hundred days.
You know what that is? That is forty times forty.
Jesus said, “I do not tell you to forgive your brother seven times, but I tell you seventy times seven.” I do not tell you that the building of God’s house will be completed after forty days, after times of testing. I tell you it is after forty times forty.
It is after test after test, trial after trial. Your whole life is going to be testing and trial and difficulty and tribulation. When forty times forty days of tribulation and trial had been accomplished, the house was finished.
Or you come to the wall in Nehemiah, and it is completed in fifty-two days. Humanly speaking, that was miraculous.
I think of fifty-two, and I think—I do not know that this is the right way to think of this, but this is the way I think of it—I think of fifty-two weeks in a year. This is one complete cycle of seasons. It represents my one life.
“Well, that’s a long time.” Fifty-two days—that was a short time.
When we see the bride of Christ coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God—gold that is so pure that the light of Jesus shines out without any refraction or minimization—and we see that city that sums up the work of God in all times and places, if we had any part in it, our one little lifetime having any effect on that city, any effect on that purpose of God’s heart, will seem miraculously short.
“You mean in my one little lifetime, my one little cycle of seasons that the Lord gave me, this was accomplished?”
It costs everything. Everything. It is just your life—just your whole life. It is just trial, tribulation, difficulty, distress. It is just fire, just the furnace.
It is just opposition from the enemy. Read Ezra 4 through Ezra 6; Nehemiah 2 through Nehemiah 6. The enemy is everywhere, and the attacks come every which way.
Sometimes they are frontal attacks: “We are going to come kill you.” Other times it is slipping in the back door with compromise. It is threats. It is demoralizing ridicule.
The enemy has myriad ways to try to hinder the building work of God, and we will face all of them. We will deal with all of them if we stay in this building work.
It is just your life. It is just forty times forty. It is just opposition. It is just learning to give all your resources to this one thing—to carry your weapons even to the water, to sleep in your clothes, to deny that which is your right in order to feed the Lord’s people rather than living off the Lord’s people.
It is only pouring out your life as a drink offering to Him.
But read the end of Revelation. See what He gets for Himself. Remember, it is not about me. It is all about Him, first to last, eternally. It is all about Him.
There is coming a day very soon when that cry will shake the heavens:
Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad, for the bride has made herself ready.
We can have a part. We do have a part. We can take our part and spend our one little life, endure one little life’s worth of trial and tribulation, furnace of affliction.
Standing against the wiles of the enemy, standing against all of his attacks, and have a part in the Lord having His purpose of the ages, His one single eternal purpose.
Somebody said yesterday, “What else matters? What else would you use your life for? What else is worth your life?” Nothing. Nothing else is worth your life.
You cannot figure it out by human reasoning. God is not interested in His purpose being accomplished by man’s better ways.
But if we come to Him with childlike faith and humility, He will reveal to us both His purpose and His ways. He will show us our part in the building of His house, His city, the preparation of His bride.
Praise the Lord.