Good morning. I would like you to turn to some familiar verses, all in the New Testament. I will read these verses in the order they appear in the New Testament.
We are all familiar with Matthew 16:18. I think we have heard it so much that sometimes we become too familiar with it. It begins, in a way, to lose its meaning. I trust that it will not as we press on together.
Matthew 16:18
And I also say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Another familiar verse is in 1 Corinthians 3. I think all of you know this verse.
1 Corinthians 3:9
For we are God’s fellow-workers: ye are God’s husbandry, God’s building.
And then verse 11:
For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Then turn to Ephesians 2. I think you begin to notice a pattern in these verses.
Ephesians 2:19–22
So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners,
but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God,
being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone;
in Whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord;
in Whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
And Hebrews 3. Again, I think this is familiar.
Hebrews 3:4–6
For every house is builded by some one; but He that built all things is God.
And Moses indeed was faithful in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were afterward to be spoken;
but Christ as a Son, over His house; Whose house are we.
And then the last little bit of verses is in 1 Peter 2, verses I have often read.
1 Peter 2:5
Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
And then in verse 9:
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.
Lord, we thank You for Your Word. We are so grateful. Your words are living. We are, again, in utter dependence, coming to You, asking once again that You would speak with us and that You would illumine our understanding; that You would grant us revelation from above to see what Your Word is saying.
We say like Samuel, “Lord, speak; Your servant heareth.” And Lord, I always remember when those disciples were offended, and You looked at them and said, “Will ye also go away?”
And Peter—bless Peter—said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”
So, Lord, would You open those words to us? Our words are meaningless; Your words are spirit and life. Grant us that exchange this morning. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Well, what I am sharing on today is the house of God: our corporate life under construction. Actually, I had the privilege of being one of the speakers at the recent Willow Run retreat in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The theme of that retreat was Under Construction.
That is something I am somewhat familiar with. Now, I think what I got out of that retreat was a shirt. You see that? “Under Construction.” When I spoke, I wore that shirt. I will spare you; I will not put you through that this morning.
But this was the theme of the conference. You will notice 1 Corinthians 3, which we read from. Someone put a square, a chisel, and a screwdriver on it—all things you need for building. This was the youth conference.
At that youth conference, Brother Stephen Wells, also from Roanoke Rapids, spoke about our Christian life under construction—our individual Christian life. I shared on our corporate Christian life. The brothers asked me if I would share that again here.
Now, you need to remember something: this was for young people, okay? I did not want simply to share a lot of principles from the Word of God, scripture after scripture. Because I am familiar with construction, I supplemented the Word of God with illustrations and talked about the building process.
The individual Christian life is a life under construction. The corporate Christian life is a life under construction. Sometimes we like to artificially separate the individual Christian life from the corporate Christian life, and you really cannot separate them. They are absolutely connected together, and both are absolutely needed.
Just think about it: if you do not have an individual Christian life, you do not have a Christian life. It is as simple as that. I thought what our brother Stephen Wells shared was so very important, and the youth were so helped by that.
You have to have an individual Christian life. Everything begins with the individual Christian life. When we are born again, that is the beginning of our individual Christian life. But notice, I said that is the beginning. That individual Christian life is under construction from that beginning, as you are made a disciple and as the Holy Spirit begins to conform you to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is a building process until you see the Lord Jesus face to face. You are under construction.
Now, that gives you an excuse if you want it. You can say, “I am not perfect.” Oh, Linda knows that very well. So now I just say, “I am under construction.”
But the individual Christian life is absolutely important. You have no beginning without it. Yet the corporate Christian life is equally important. You cannot just talk about my life with the Lord Jesus. You cannot just talk about my relationship with the Lord Jesus. You cannot just think about what you have from God.
The individual Christian life has to come into, and is intended to come into, the corporate Christian life. You cannot have the one without the other.
I have always said it this way, because it is the way I can remember it: without the individual Christian life, the Christian life is impossible; but without the corporate Christian life, the Christian life is incomplete.
Some of us have no sense of what we are called to corporately. Now, you know that is my burden, so forgive me if I do not dwell too long on the individual Christian life. But these things are inseparably married together. They are both under construction.
As a matter of fact, I want to tell you a little story. When we were young in the Lord here years ago, when the Lord first began to move, we were so impressed with this corporate Christian life. It got hold of us. We saw something we had never seen.
We were all saved people. We were all individually saved. Individually, the Lord was working on us. But it dawned on us that there was something besides just our life with the Lord.
So much so that, when we used to pray, we were adamant: we would always pray in the plural. You may think that is a bit strange and awkward, but it was not awkward at all to us. As we would pray, we would hear prayers such as, “Us, Lord. We, Lord. Give us some understanding. Open our eyes. Make us to see. Prepare us for what You are saying.”
I remember we would change songs and choruses. We might sing a chorus in the singular, saying, “How I have come to know Him,” and then we would say, “Can we just change it?” That impression was so deep.
Then we would begin to sing, “We, Lord, how You have met us, and how we want to follow on as a company of God’s people, to know You and to be built up together.” So that was the burden.
Now, I know the word corporate throws some people. They think, “Is he talking about his company? What on earth is he talking about?” What does corporate mean?
Well, corporate simply means shared as a group. It is not a mysterious word, okay? I had to explain that to young people. But Webster has, I think, an even better definition: “United in one group; a corporate body.”
That is what the house of God is. We are the body of Christ. We are the church. We do not just have an individual life—as blessed and as great and as wonderful as that is—but together we have a life in the Lord that is under construction, being built up, and being transformed into all that He wants.
I am going to share a little bit about construction as we go along too. I have been over forty years in the construction industry. I know I do not look that old. That was a joke, Jim.
When I started, I was with the Division of Construction for the City of Richmond. It was not very long, but that is where I met Jerry Amon. Since 1974, I have been with my own company and in the construction industry.
One thing I have learned: every time you go on a construction site, you had better wear your hard hat. You might wonder why I brought this thing, and it might freak some of you out, but this is the way I look when I go on a construction site. Jerry looks the same way, except his does not say that; it says something different.
When I spoke to the kids, I wore my hard hat because, you see, we are a construction site. God is building. God is working. Now, if this is freaking you out, I will take it off. But God is doing something tremendous.
The reason we do this when we go out there is that we do not like things falling on our heads. But also, they will fine you a thousand dollars if OSHA gets you without your hard hat on. That is compelling reason to wear your hard hat and not get a knot on your head.
We are under construction. We need to see that our corporate life is to be built up together: a holy habitation for God in the Spirit.
The first thing we need to understand by way of introduction is that you cannot have a building without a proper foundation. You cannot.
Every building construction site that I know, and every project I have been involved with, first puts in the foundation. As a matter of fact, there is a new trend, because of the time value of money, called early foundation projects.
We structural engineers work harder than anybody else, because the architect—forgive me if you are an architect here—is out in his dazed world of beauty and things. They are out there playing with a building, and they say, “Give us the foundation.” The building has not been designed, but, “Give us the foundations.”
So we come up with the foundation because it is the first thing to go in, and it is the most important thing to go in. Every building—whether it is your individual Christian life or your corporate Christian life—begins with a proper foundation.
If you do not have a proper foundation, your building will fail. I am telling you that. That is simple.
And 1 Corinthians 3:11 says emphatically:
For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
He is the only foundation. We sung it: “All other ground is sinking sand.” There is no other foundation that can be laid. Unless our individual life is built upon that foundation, and unless our corporate life is built upon that foundation, it will not stand.
One thing that struck me in our study of Matthew together was how the Lord closed the Sermon on the Mount. I do not know if you have ever noticed that, but He closed the Sermon on the Mount with His story about building.
He could have closed the Sermon on the Mount—that greatest message of all messages—with anything, but He closed that great message with this illustration about building.
He says there are two men: one is a wise man, and one is a foolish man. The wise man builds his house upon the rock. Because of that, it says his house shall stand.
But then it says the foolish man builds his house upon the sand. In each case, the rain came, the streams came, and the wind came. For the wise man, his house stood because it was founded upon the rock. That was the only reason.
We know the rock is the Lord Jesus. He is the sure foundation. But it says of the foolish man—and we have a choice to be one or the other—“How great was the fall thereof.”
So, number one: the most important thing is, what is your life founded on? What is your foundation? What is your support? What is the meaning of your life? Is it your career, your schooling, your family?
Unless that life—individual and corporate—is founded upon the Lord Jesus, the Word of God says it will fail.
Another thing I shared with the kids is that most of my career, particularly the latter part of my career, has been in the investigation of failing buildings. I spend a lot of energy on it, and I get very dirty. Linda sees me come home and says, “What did you wear that shirt for on that job site?”
As I crawl through these old buildings, looking for cracks and damage and trying to figure out what caused the building to fail, I never wear a bow tie when I crawl through buildings. I will let you know that right now.
But when you crawl through, you are trying to figure out: How was this building damaged? What caused this building to fail? Why has it failed? We could give weeks to this, but let me simplify it.
First of all, almost always, failure—and the most extreme failures—seems to result from a faulty foundation. That is number one.
I went out and looked at a wall recently, and the thing had dropped about six inches. It had a faulty foundation because it was built on eighteen feet of unstable sand. That is the foolish man.
We said, “What do we do?” I had the bright idea: tear it down. They did not like that idea. So we put in a whole new deep foundation under it and actually jacked it up to where it is almost level. It is pretty amazing what you can do in construction.
Number two: a structure that fails may be poorly built upon the foundation. It can be poor materials. It can be a number of things.
But remember, 1 Corinthians 3 tells us that it is important how you build upon the foundation. You cannot just build with any material you want. You cannot build with wood, hay, and stubble—which is your life, your energy, man’s strength, man’s wisdom, man’s glory, and man’s efforts.
It has to be gold, silver, and precious stones. That is God’s glory. That is all of God. As we build, be careful what you build with.
I cannot tell you the number of times I have gone out and said, “Boy, this is the wrong stuff.” The guy says, “Why did my building fail?” I say, “You put in the wrong stuff. You just cannot build with that material.”
Another thing we talked about is building not according to plan. Sometimes we think, “Well, let’s just freelance.” Let me tell you: in the building industry, there should not be freelancing. You cannot do it.
You cannot build any way you want. If it is a public project, just try it and you will have a rude awakening. You have to build according to code, according to good engineering practice, and according to the plans.
Even Moses, when he was going to build the tabernacle, was told by God, “Moses, build it according to the pattern that I give you.” You cannot just freelance. You cannot do your own thing. The church is not everybody doing their own thing.
You know, a lot of people still say “blueprints.” That is an old term. It just shows you how old you are. They do not do those anymore. They really were blue with white lines. But you have to build according to the plan.
Often I have gone out, looked at the plans, looked up, and looked down, and said, “They left that beam out.” On one of my projects, they left the whole column out. We could not believe it. We got there, and it was not there.
The other day, while investigating a project, one of my partners was out there. They cut out the whole wall, and there was no beam. It was a country club, and the floor dropped four inches.
Then there is poor design. I will admit it: there are poor designs. But we must not build according to man’s design. Man is full of ideas—or full of it, if you want to put it that way. Only God’s ideas are the way to build.
Lastly, a structure may fail because it has not been maintained throughout the life of the structure. This is the biggest thing, ironically. Many structures have their service life—that is what we call how long you can use it—devastatingly cut short because of lack of maintenance.
I went out to a parking deck recently. A big truck drove over the top elevated level, and a six-foot-by-twelve-foot piece of the concrete slab dropped out from under it. Thankfully, he made it to the other side. Thankfully, he did it on a Sunday evening, when no one else was working under that parking deck.
It was atrocious. I have never seen such lack of maintenance.
Now, here is the point to us as Christians: you must maintain your Christian life. You cannot just build a building and leave it. It is called deferred maintenance.
Mac knows deferred maintenance will get you in the end every time. You can put it off, but in the end you may have a disaster waiting, just like this guy at the parking deck.
He had to fly up from Florida. I remember talking to him. He said, “What can I do?” I said, “Listen, you do not understand how serious this is. This could have killed somebody. I could have been your adversary on the other side of the table, expert witnessing, telling that judge why you did not maintain your building.”
He said, “All of my luck is going so bad.” I said, “It is not going bad. Luck is with you right now. It did not kill somebody.”
But do we maintain our Christian life? Do we read the Word? Do we pray? Do we meditate? Do we gather with the saints?
The writer of Hebrews warned the people of God:
Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.
That is the corporate Christian life. We should be gathering.
I have just three questions we are going to deal with this morning. Why does the Bible emphasize the building of the house of God? That is question number one. These are simple. Remember, this was for kids, guys. If I have gotten too complicated for you already, I apologize.
Why does the Bible seem to put such a great emphasis on the building of the house of God? You may argue with me about that. You may say, “Brother, I do not agree with you.” Well, that is okay. I am not asking you to agree with me.
But I am asking you to read the Word carefully throughout. Do not just read bits and parts of it; read it throughout. I believe you will see a pattern that begins in the Old Testament, when the people are first called together corporately, and extends right through to the end of the Bible.
That emphasis, I think you see if you read it objectively, is that God is interested in building His house.
When the children of God were in bondage in Egypt, they were delivered from their bondage by their great salvation. By the way, that is a shadow and type of us as Christians, who have been delivered from this world—which Egypt represents—and from our great bondage to sin.
They were brought out and brought to the promised land. That promised land to us is Christ.
You remember Moses brought them out to Mount Sinai. When we think of the story of Mount Sinai, I think most of us conclude that it is about the law. The law was given to Moses for the people of God, and that was a great part of the story.
But the law is a temporary measure. It is a temporary measure. As a matter of fact, when we read Galatians, we discover that the law was a tutor to bring us to Christ.
They did the wrong thing. When the law was given, they said to Moses, “All that You say we will do.” Amazing statement. I never say that to anybody. Put that in your memo book this morning: do not say that, because you will never be able to do it.
But the point is, when Moses was on that mountain, you begin to discover in Exodus what God did as a permanent thing: He showed Moses the pattern for the tabernacle.
Exodus 25:8–9
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.
The Key Word Bible uses the word construct for this word, make it. That is what they were to do. This was the permanent thing that was in God’s heart.
Can you imagine the God of glory saying, through Moses, to the people of God, “What I want you to do is build Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among you”?
If you read the whole history, you discover that He says, “I will meet with you there. I will speak to you there.” You read on in that same chapter: “I will appear before you at the mercy seat, in the holiest of all, before the ark of the covenant, and there I will meet with you and speak with you.”
The building of the tabernacle is the beginning of God’s emphasis on that construction He is after. He is looking for a house. With His people, He is looking for the building of that house.
The tabernacle is absolutely important. It is called the tent of meeting. It is called the tent of the testimony.
We often hear talk about the testimony, and some people get blurry-eyed and begin to shake because they do not know what we are talking about. But the testimony represents who God is among His people.
The tent of the testimony means that the God of glory was in their midst, dwelling in their midst, revealing Himself, speaking to them, manifesting Himself, and setting them apart from all the people on the earth. That made a difference. In that, there was testimony.
Without the tent of the testimony, there would be no testimony among the children of Israel. You can say what you will, but there would be no testimony.
The conclusion of the book of Exodus shows how their whole life was geared around the tent of the testimony. It had a cloud on it by day and fire on it by night. Wherever they went, they were instructed to follow the cloud by day and the fire by night.
They encamped around the tent of the testimony. Their life was involved in the tent of the testimony.
Another example in the Old Testament is Solomon’s temple. David is called a man after God’s own heart. When Solomon explained this in 2 Chronicles, he said, “David my father had it in his heart to build the house of God.”
And the Lord said, “It was good that that was in your heart.” That was David’s passion. Brothers and sisters, to me that speaks volumes. That seems to me to be what made him a man after God’s own heart.
It was left to Solomon to build that temple. In 2 Chronicles 2:1, we read:
And Solomon determined to build a house for the name of the Lord.
Brothers and sisters, this is the emphasis in the Word of God. We should purpose to build the house of God. It should be our vocation. It should be what we are given to.
Solomon purposed. That is not willy-nilly. I cannot say that word any stronger. It spoke of what was in Solomon’s heart.
He even mused, “The heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee; how much less this house which I build!” Yet when you read 2 Chronicles, you discover that, just like the tent of the testimony, the glory of the Lord fell upon Solomon’s temple.
So much so that the priests could not stand. God said, “I will speak to you from here. If anyone prays to Me from here, I will answer that prayer.” That is the emphasis.
Some people put it this way: the tent, or the tabernacle, is the portable house of God. In one sense, we are also journeying. We are in the wilderness of this world, and we are sojourning. We are portable. We are aliens and foreigners to this world.
But the temple of Solomon is the permanent house of God. When you read this section of 2 Chronicles, I tend to get butterflies. This seems to be the zenith of the children of Israel’s experience, and the glory of Israel was during that time when Solomon’s temple was actually built.
That is what it meant to God.
Then I think of the rebuilt temple. God is a God of recovery. The people, the children of Israel, began to sin and become idolatrous, and God Himself gave up His testimony to Babylonian captivity. God Himself allowed the temple to be destroyed.
It seems strange, but God gave up His people; He did not give up on His idea of a house.
When He called the children of Israel out—those remnant ones who would respond out of Babylonian captivity—He called them for a single purpose.
Ezra 1:1–4 records that Cyrus, a Gentile king, Cyrus king of Persia, said that God had called him to build God a house in Jerusalem. Whoever among God’s people would go back to Jerusalem was to go back in order to build the house of God which was at Jerusalem.
That was the whole reason for the recovery.
God raised up Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest. He also raised up Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. They all had one focus: to get the people back, to return to the Lord, to return to Him as their single God and point of reference, and to build the house.
The whole trouble in Haggai was that they stopped building. He said, “Why have you stopped building?” For fourteen years they stopped. They laid the foundation, and then they stopped building.
Haggai has this wonderfully encouraging word: “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former.” What a promise.
That is the Old Testament. Now think about the New Testament. The Lord Jesus comes, and He is with His people doing miracles. He comes to Matthew 16.
His disciples are with Him at Caesarea Philippi. He has them apart, and He says, “Who do men say that I, the Son of man, am?” You have heard this before, right?
Of course, they take a few shots at it, kind of the way I do things sometimes. But then Peter says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Then the Lord says, “I say unto thee, Peter, thou art Peter, and upon this rock”—meaning Himself—“I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
I cannot tell you what that statement of Brother Kong meant to me this past summer, when he said, “At this moment, the Lord shares what is uppermost in His heart.”
All through the Old Testament we see a pattern. When we come into the New Testament, when the Lord finally begins to open up Who He is and begins to share what is in His heart, He shares, “What is in My heart is to build this house.”
This, to me, seems to be the emphasis in the New Testament.
Then you turn to the end of the New Testament. In Revelation, you see the New Jerusalem coming down as a bride adorned for her husband. The conclusion is that the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall be their God, and they shall be His people.
Then, at the end of that section, it says, “It is done.” It seems to me that “It is done” means, “I have accomplished what was in My heart to do.”
This construction project, this building project, this labor that God has been after—from when He first called His people to a corporate expression to when He brings His people to Himself in eternity—has to do with the building of the house.
That seems to me to be the reason the Bible emphasizes this.
Here is another question: What is the house God is building today? This is an important question.
We must conclude, if we read the Bible, that He is building His house. We must conclude from reading the Bible that this is apparently very important to Him.
We must conclude, then, as we read about a man after God’s own heart, even David, and how God raised up prophets, rulers, priests, and even sovereignly a Gentile king—Cyrus king of Persia—that we should be involved in this with all of our purpose, like Solomon was.
You have to conclude that. I know some people think I stretch the point. I do not think I am stretching the point there.
You know, when you look at Abraham in the Old Testament, you see what Abraham’s motivation was. I use my wife’s version—the English Standard Version. Never use my wife’s version, by the way. But I really like the way it puts this in the present tense.
Hebrews 11:10
For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
Is that not good? Your version might say, “Whose maker and builder is God.” But this says, “Whose designer and builder is God.”
I want to let you in on another secret of the construction industry. There is a love-hate relationship in the construction industry. Contractors tend to blame us designers when something goes wrong. Well, we equally like to blame the contractors when things go wrong.
Believe me, I have been in some pretty tense situations in expert witnessing, when fingers were pointed across the table and at each other, the wheels fell off, and everybody was saying, “It is your fault. You did it.”
But brothers and sisters, this is the encouragement: the Designer and the Builder is God. Is that not cool? I think that is the coolest thing.
It does not just say the Builder is God and leave us up to our imagination to design. The Designer is God—the perfect Designer. Can He make a mistake? Absolutely not. He is the perfect Builder.
We have not found a perfect builder yet. But here is the perfect Builder: the Builder is God.
I happen to be a grandparent—actually, a grandparent of five little beautiful things. This afternoon I get to know what my sixth grandchild is going to be. We have this thing called a cake reveal or something.
I did not know what on earth it was, but we go down to Newport News and cut open this cake. If it is blue on the inside, you get it; and if it is pink on the inside, you also get it. I told my partner this on Friday when he asked what I was doing this weekend. I said, “I am going to look at a cake.” He said, “Can’t they just call you?”
As a grandparent, I do not know if any of you have seen that animated British series, Bob the Builder. Have you ever seen that? Some of you have. You know Bob the Builder, right?
It is so much fun. He has a little yellow hard hat. The statement they always make is, “Can we fix it?” And all of you who know Bob the Builder know what they say in unison: “Yes, we can!”
I never knew Obama got his first logo from Bob the Builder: “Yes, we can.” Personally, if I were advising the United States, I would take the logo from that other phrase: “Can we fix this?” I am sorry, that is the only political joke I have.
But God is the Builder, Whose maker and Builder is God. Is that not tremendous?
Just think if you were the builder. If you were the builder, I would be in great despair. If I were the designer, you would be in great despair. If we thought we had to depend upon our wisdom, intelligence, plans, and ideas for the building of this corporate house, we would be undone.
But we discover in the Word of God that the Builder and the Designer is God.
What do you think the house God is building today is? A lot of people say, “Why, it is the church building.” It is the church. “You know, this is the house of God.”
Boy, it is a poor representation, with cracks all in the ceiling. Forgive me for pointing out the obvious. But we say it is a building.
As a matter of fact, people say, “I went to church on Sunday.” Or, “I am going to church next Sunday. I am going to church to pray Wednesday night.” You cannot go to church. It is not a building. It is a people.
It says in 1 Corinthians 3:9, “Ye are God’s building.” We are.
Then people who are a little more enlightened say, “Oh, I got it. I never say the building is the house of God. It is the people. It is like the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, or the non-denominational people. That is the house of God.”
Well, it is not an organization either. I have heard people say, “I am a good Baptist,” and I ask them, “Are you a good Christian?”
I do not have anything against Baptists. Jerry is a Baptist—a hard-shell one, boy. He shook the dust off his feet the first time he met me and said, “God could never save him.” I remembered, Jerry. I will not let you forget it either.
It is not an organization. It is not a denomination. This house that He is building is a people.
I am going to get in trouble in this room: all of us are not necessarily in the church. That is the reason I am wearing a hard hat—so when you throw your Bibles at me.
You may be in the building. You may meet with us. You do not have a roll that you can sign, but you may not be in the church.
If you are not born of God, if you are not born of the Spirit, if you have not received the Lord Jesus into your heart, if you have not believed in the Lord Jesus, if you have not been transformed by His life coming into you and beginning that construction work, you are not in the church.
The only membership that matters is whether you are a member of the body of Christ. That is the church.
We are His body. It says in 1 Corinthians 12 that we are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof. That is the church.
We need to understand that. So many people have a wrong understanding. I have heard Richmond called the city of churches. I do not know when that name was given. I have heard that about Greensboro too.
The reason is that sometimes you have a church on every corner. At about noon, the Baptists and the Methodists come out and look at each other. I wonder if they wave.
Now, the Pentecostals do not, because they are still in there. They have those two- and three-hour meetings. They do not have time to wave. The Methodist has to get home. I am being facetious.
That is not the church, brothers and sisters. May we have an enlightened understanding that we are God’s building.
Ephesians 2 says we are being built up a holy temple in the Lord, a habitation for God in the Spirit. That is what we are. Oh, how we need to see that.
As a matter of fact, 1 Peter 2:5 says:
Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house.
That is what we are being built up as: a spiritual house. It is not a physical house. It is not a list. It is not an organization.
You can only get into this house by being a living stone. That living stone does not mean your life; it means that the life of the Lord Jesus is in you.
What makes up the church is Christ in you and Christ in me. As we come together as members of His body, we more fully express what the church is.
It is not a physical house. It is a spiritual house. That is what we need to see. We are living stones.
Now, the last question is this: How is the house of God built today? This is very important.
The house of God is not just an idea. It is not just a dream. This construction project is not just a dream.
Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the master architects, had a dream. He had a dream of a mile-high building. He had the plans for it, but it stayed a dream. That would have been an amazing feat, but it never became reality.
The point is, the house of God is not to remain a dream. I see lots of people who can talk until they are blue in the face about the house of God and what it is like. They have some concept about the building of the house, but they do not enter into the practical realization of the building of the house.
They do not do it. It is just a dream. It is not supposed to be a theory.
There are three things with which we will close here in 1 Peter 2. The major things in every construction project are two things—only two things: materials and labor. You got it?
Now, do not come up here, you people who are much more advanced, and explain the other way. Do not say, “Well, brother, there is overhead, there is profit, and there are these different things.” Yes, that is true, but they are minor components.
If you look at the breakdown in a building sheet for an application for payment—which we often have to approve to see the state of construction—it has two main components. One is material; the second is labor.
So if this house is to be built, there has to be material, and there has to be labor.
First of all, the material is what we have already read about. Peter said, “You are living stones, built together.”
Notice that emphasis. He did not just say, “You are living stones.” I tell you, a lot of brothers and sisters say, “I am a living stone. I am not built with anybody, but I am a living stone. I am off here on my own, doing my own thing, but I love the other stones. I am with you in spirit.”
I do not like it when people tell me that. I would rather say, “I wish you were with me in presence.”
As a matter of fact, in the building of a real building, if the construction material is not on site, you cannot get paid for it. If it is not used and put in the building, you will never get paid for it.
Do you understand? It is what is on site. That is why that phrase takes on great meaning in the Word of God: we are to be built together.
Unless we are together on this construction site, being built up together, this house of God cannot be built. It has to be that way.
“Being built together” is the emphasis in both Ephesians 2 and 1 Peter 2.
The second thing is labor. Most of us do not like this word labor, unless we are thinking of babies. Then we think it is wonderful. Labor makes us think of another four-letter word: work. This word labor frightens us.
But you cannot build the house of God without labor. You cannot build a construction project without labor. Let us face it: it is work.
Many people spend major energies in their life trying to get out of work. But it is work.
The labor in the house of God is the priests. It says in 1 Peter 2 that we are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. Verse 9 says, “A royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.”
These are those who labor in the house.
What we like to do is say, “Well, let’s leave it up to the spiritual ones.” What has happened in Christendom is that we say, “Let’s leave it up to the pastors. Let’s leave it up to the deacons. Let’s leave it up to the elders. Let’s leave it up to the professionals. Why else do we pay them a salary?”
But according to the pattern in the Word of God, every believer is a priest. Every believer. It is the priests who labor together to build the house.
We need to see this, brothers and sisters. This is something that revolutionized our understanding.
I remember—not so recently now—Bobby Mueller sharing with us brothers the thing that held him to gathering when we were going through some real shakings. He said it was this understanding of the priesthood of all believers.
There is the labor. You cannot say, “Let him do it. Let the workers do it. Let the elders do it.” That is the only way the house of God will be built.
Then there is one final thing. Verse 5 says:
Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Verse 9 says that we might “show forth,” or “set forth” in this version, the excellencies of Him Who called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.
There has to be material. Number one, you are the material. There has to be labor. Number two, you are the priest. There has to be sacrifice. Number three, or the temple—the house—cannot be built.
When you look into the Old Testament, when you look into what was first mentioned about the tabernacle, it was the heave offerings that the people brought which enabled the tabernacle to be built.
When you look into the recovered temple, even those people staying in Babylon were told by Cyrus king of Persia, “You that stay here, give of your gold. Give of your silver. Give of your voluntary offering.” That is the word in the Word of God.
It is the sacrifice, the giving, that makes the house be built.
Now, I know this is talking about a spiritual sacrifice. But sometimes, brothers and sisters, we do not understand that the house will never be built without this—without the voluntary offerings, without us giving ourselves.
We do not get it. It seems to be up here, but not here. But the house of God will never be built without the sacrifices of the priests.
Even in the temple of Solomon, David prepared all of his life, and Solomon talked about the freewill offerings.
I want to close with this because I think it is absolutely important.
There is a verse in Deuteronomy 16:16. As a matter of fact, it was prayed this morning.
Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose: in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles; and they shall not appear before the Lord empty.
Brothers and sisters, that is what the apostle Peter is getting at. We are to offer sacrifices acceptable to God. We are to show forth the praises of Him Who called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.
You may not think that is so important, but if we do not do that, the house of God will not be built. It is only built with material. It is only built with labor. It is only built with spiritual sacrifice.
That is the secret.
Now, I want to challenge you. I think this morning was better than many mornings when we gather, but some mornings we gather and it seems like we gather before the Lord empty.
Some Wednesday nights when we come to pray, it seems like we are gathering before the Lord empty. The same people pray. The same people offer their spiritual sacrifice.
Now, I know this is not just verbal. You do not have to rush up here to the platform and dress me down on this. But I think there is a point.
If, when we gather as this corporate building of God to be built up a holy habitation for God in the Spirit, we do not come prepared—as we heard this morning in the opening—with our sacrifice and our praise, then at a minimum you have to conclude that the building of the house of God will be hindered.
On the other hand, if we are truly those living stones, with the life of Christ in us; if we are truly priests, not in name only, but functioning; and if we seek the Lord for our part, however little it is, then something can happen.
I want to encourage you young people: get over this feeling of self-consciousness, where you think, “Oh my goodness, someone is going to hear me pray and think I said the wrong thing.”
I will tell you a little secret: I say the wrong thing lots of times. Sometimes Linda tells me. Get over it.
Come not empty-handed. Prepare to be that functioning priest. Bring your sacrifice of praise into the house of God. Bring your offering, that is acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, into that house.
If all of us will do that and not hold back, the glory of the Lord will once again fill this house the same way it filled the tabernacle.
The glory of the Lord will again fill this spiritual house, the same way it filled the temple of Solomon, and the priests could not stand.
We will sooner rather than later hear those blessed words when our Lord returns: “The tabernacle of God is with men.”
And He will utter those last words: “It is done.”
Lord, we just commit these thoughts to You, random as they might be, that You in Your mercy will show us what You are after. Then You in Your grace will help us to respond to what You are after.
Lord, we want to see Your house built. We want again to offer ourselves as that living sacrifice we read about in Romans 12. We want You to move on us in such a way that You can say those words sooner rather than later: “It is done.”
Lord, help us. We give ourselves to You, thankful You have redeemed us. We are humbled that we are the material You will build with. We are humbled even more to think that You are going to dwell in us for eternity.
And we are moved that our little sacrifice has such great meaning. Would You help us? We ask it in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.