SPEAKER_00: Morning.
SPEAKER_00: Well, here we are again.
SPEAKER_00: Second chapter of Haggai.
SPEAKER_00: If you missed last week, let me give you a quick rundown of what's happening with the people of Israel in the book of Haggai.
SPEAKER_00: We came last week and we saw that they had been in captivity for a great period of time because of their disobedience from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And when they were released from captivity, they were released with a command from their captor to go home and rebuild their temple.
SPEAKER_00: And he had said, You are free, go rebuild your place of worship, go worship your God.
SPEAKER_00: And they went home and they rebuilt the walls of their city for safety, and then they built their houses and they stopped.
SPEAKER_00: And they focused on their own lives and they were worried about their own comforts.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord challenged them and said, Should you be living in paneled houses?
SPEAKER_00: Which was a new technology, so to speak, of that day, referring to the comfort of their houses and how nice they were.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You're living in paneled houses, and my house is a ruin.
SPEAKER_00: And you're so worried about your comfort that you've forgotten about my glory amongst you.
SPEAKER_00: And last week we looked at that challenge and how we reflect that same heart and how we fight and scratch and claw for our comforts.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we do that forgetting about God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of that, the people's hearts are changed.
SPEAKER_00: It's a work of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It says that the Lord stirred up the spirit of the governor and the priest and the people, and that they came to rebuild the temple because of the Lord's work in their heart.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how we come to Haggai too.
SPEAKER_00: That they're they've come and they said, okay, we're ready to work, God.
SPEAKER_00: But they get to the temple site and they look at the rubble and they're overwhelmed at the task of rebuilding God's temple.
SPEAKER_00: So let's read in Haggai chapter 2, verses 1 through 9.
SPEAKER_00: In the seventh month on the 21st day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet.
SPEAKER_00: Speak now to Zerubbabel, the son of Sheelteel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehoshack the High Priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?
SPEAKER_00: How do you see it now?
SPEAKER_00: Is it not as nothing in your eyes?
SPEAKER_00: Yet be strong, O Zerubabel, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehosadakh the high priest, be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: According to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt, my spirit remains in your midst.
SPEAKER_00: Fear not.
SPEAKER_00: For thus says the Lord of hosts, yet once more in a little while I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the dry sea and the land, and I will shake the nations, so that the treasures of all the nations shall come in.
SPEAKER_00: And I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: The silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we ask that today you would open our eyes and our ears and our hearts, most of all, to see your work that you want to do through us, to take comfort in the fact that you are with us, to put aside reliance in our own strength and seek your strength as our source of achievement.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So we have these people, and they have been walking away from God, ignoring the fact that he wants to dwell in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: And when he returns to them and says, Let me be among you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget about my glory.
SPEAKER_00: They say, Okay.
SPEAKER_00: And they come to the temple and they stand there at the ruined foundations and they go, Whoa, I don't know if we can do this.
SPEAKER_00: They look at it and they're frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: The task was overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: The task of rebuilding the temple seemed impossible to them.
SPEAKER_00: They looked at it, they read the scriptures, they read the account of what the temple was supposed to look like.
SPEAKER_00: They knew their history, they knew that it was built under Solomon's rule.
SPEAKER_00: They knew that Solomon had amassed a great amount of wealth and that there had been years of prosperity in Israel before the building of the temple, and they knew that they did not have any of these resources at their disposal.
SPEAKER_00: They were a people that had come out of captivity and were rebuilding.
SPEAKER_00: They were a people that had lost all of the wealth that had been amassed under the years of prosperity of other leaders.
SPEAKER_00: And they said, How are we going to rebuild this temple?
SPEAKER_00: The one that is adorned with gold everywhere, that had gold plating all of the pillars and all of the decorative, the one that was built with the finest cedars in the land that have been vanished from the earth now.
SPEAKER_00: In a lot of ways, they felt like they just couldn't come up with what was needed to present the temple to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The previous temple had been a magnificent structure undertaken during Solomon's rule.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Kings 6 talks about the details of the gold that adorned everything.
SPEAKER_00: But even before 1 Kings 6, the tabernacle existed before the temple.
SPEAKER_00: See, God always wanted to dwell with his people.
SPEAKER_00: And before they had a permanent place to build a temple, as they wandered in the desert, he had them build the tabernacle, which was a tent that they took down and put back up everywhere they went, that made sure they realized God was traveling with them.
SPEAKER_00: But in this tent there was all this decorative tools that had different purposes that showed the glory of the Lord and pointed towards Christ in many, many ways.
SPEAKER_00: And so you read the descriptions of the tabernacle, and everything that was in the tabernacle was basically in the temple, but you combine that with 1 Kings 6 and the gold that's mentioned there and the ornamentation, and they're looking at this and they're going, how do we do it?
SPEAKER_00: And it seems overwhelming to them.
SPEAKER_00: It's so much so that God recognizes this is overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually, it points us to the fact that it looks as if God wants them to be overwhelmed at the task.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, God says to the people, who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?
SPEAKER_00: How do you see it now?
SPEAKER_00: Is it not as nothing in your eyes?
SPEAKER_00: He points them to this fact that this is gonna be impossible.
SPEAKER_00: And they're frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: That's great, that's a great history lesson, but what does it mean to us today?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: What is our task that we have been called to?
SPEAKER_00: Is it not the same?
SPEAKER_00: Is our task not to build the house of the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Is that not our call in Matthew 28?
SPEAKER_00: Where he says, Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
SPEAKER_00: Is it not our call in Acts 2.8 or 1-8?
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: In Ephesians 2.19, he says to us, consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone, and in him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And in him you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I want to read those last two verses and I want you to hear them spoken to you.
SPEAKER_00: In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which he lives by his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We are the temple of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This temple that they are building, he is saying to us in Ephesians that we as the body of Christ represent God's dwelling on earth.
SPEAKER_00: We are the place where God dwells, not this building, but amongst us as a body, and not just as individuals in the body, though he does reside in our hearts individually.
SPEAKER_00: He is saying that there is something special about us being built together.
SPEAKER_00: That we come together, and when we come together, different from different backgrounds and different places and ages and periods and experience, that we come.
SPEAKER_00: And when we recognize we're united, not because of our similarities, but of what the earth has to offer, not because we both like football or the things that people join together over, but because we've all been saved by the same Savior.
SPEAKER_00: That when we are united, it is bonding the bricks of God's temple together.
SPEAKER_00: This means building the structure of God's temple by gathering the bricks to ourselves through evangelism and strengthening the structure as it is secured to the foundation and discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: That's why in Matthew 28 it says, Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you.
SPEAKER_00: We share the message of God.
SPEAKER_00: We offer his grace, and when those bricks come to faith, we then build them stronger in the foundation.
SPEAKER_00: And it says that Christ is a chief cornerstone.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is a chief cornerstone, and on him is the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you say, well, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the apostles wrote the New Testament and the prophets wrote the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: So Christ as our chief cornerstone and the foundation connected to him of the word of God, because he is the word.
SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so we have the scriptures, and so in Christ and the word that proclaims him, we are built up on top of those things.
SPEAKER_00: And it says, you're being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And this task of building the house of God that we have been charged with, that is the same task that was charged to the people in Haggai, can be overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: Can it not?
SPEAKER_00: It can be intimidating in the same way that they said, I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: I look at this task and I go, how am I supposed to do this?
SPEAKER_00: I am but one man.
SPEAKER_00: I am weak.
SPEAKER_00: I am sinful and flawed.
SPEAKER_00: How am I supposed to tell others to rest in his grace and walk forward in purity when I struggle with that myself?
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't want to preach the message.
SPEAKER_00: And we all let these little things hold us back, and we become overwhelmed and frustrated, and we hold back because we think we're unworthy of the task.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we look at leaders that came before us and say, well, I can't do as good a job as they did, so I'm just not going to.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe we get intimidated because of how little we know about the Bible compared to somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: And we say, you know what, I just I need to study more, maybe four, five, six, seventeen, twenty more years or so, and then I'll know enough to start building God's house, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, or we leave it to the people that we pay in the churches, and we say, oh, well, we hire pastors to do that part.
SPEAKER_00: And we get overwhelmed, and we say, I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: And we're just like the people in Haggai.
SPEAKER_00: So what does God want to say to his people as they stand before this rubble and they say, I can't rebuild the temple, it's too overwhelming, I'm not equipped, I don't have the goods to bring.
SPEAKER_00: And God has a simple message.
SPEAKER_00: Simple but profound.
SPEAKER_00: And that message is I am with you.
SPEAKER_00: I am with you.
SPEAKER_00: God looks at Israel and says, I'm with you.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, verse 4, declares the Lord, be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehosedak, the high priest, be strong, all you people in the land, declares the Lord, Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And he says in verse 5 that he's with them, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt, my spirit remains in your midst.
SPEAKER_00: Do not fear.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I've always been with you.
SPEAKER_00: I've always been with you.
SPEAKER_00: Look, look at your history.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what I've done with you over the ages.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the covenant I made with you when you came out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: I told you I would not leave you, and I have not.
SPEAKER_00: You have look at when I led you through the Red Sea and parted the waters before you.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the nations that you overcame to take the holy land, that you thought you could not, that your spies went into the land and said, There's no way we could take that land, there's giants living in it.
SPEAKER_00: And look at the way that by marching around the city the walls came down in my might because I was with you, and not because of your might, but because of my might.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what I've done.
SPEAKER_00: I've always been with you.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think it will be different now?
SPEAKER_00: And he points them to his presence with them as a source of comfort and as a source of strength.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, He will remain with them.
SPEAKER_00: Not only have I always been with you, but I'm with you now, and I will stay with you.
SPEAKER_00: Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: According to the covenant that I made with you when I came out of Egypt, my spirit remains in your midst.
SPEAKER_00: And that word remains has a sense of currently, but that it's not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: That it is here and forward.
SPEAKER_00: Not just now, but I'm not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: My spirit remains and will remain with you.
SPEAKER_00: So don't fear.
SPEAKER_00: So as we take on the overwhelming task of building the house of God and we have the same encouragement laid before us, are we going to let it give us peace?
SPEAKER_00: Because we have the same encouragement laid before us.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to Matthew 28 that we just read, when our call is the same one to build the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.
SPEAKER_00: The same promise is given to you.
SPEAKER_00: As you build his house, as you seek to spread his word and make his name great and draw people to him through the power of the Spirit and grow in the church in your knowledge of how to serve him.
SPEAKER_00: He is with us.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the history before the temple was built.
SPEAKER_00: We already talked about it some.
SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle and what it represented, as they were a wandering people.
SPEAKER_00: That God didn't say, Come march to me.
SPEAKER_00: Come, come find me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm here waiting for you.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You have a great journey before you, and I'm going to take it with you.
SPEAKER_00: And so his dwelling with the people was a tabernacle, a tent that could be set up everywhere they went, so that every night when they stopped and set this up, when they could stop and set up camp, it was a great reminder that his presence is with them.
SPEAKER_00: And it pointed them to the fact that he wanted to stay with them when it became more permanent.
SPEAKER_00: And when they developed and found a kingdom to call their own, when he gave them the land that he told them he would give them, and they established a more permanent temple under Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm with you.
SPEAKER_00: My presence is amongst you.
SPEAKER_00: And it pointed to a fact and a day that his name would take even more meaning.
SPEAKER_00: His name, Emmanuel, which we sung about, Emmanuel, which literally translates God with us.
SPEAKER_00: So that not only would he dwell in the temple, but that he would walk amongst us one day.
SPEAKER_00: And he did that when Jesus came and walked this earth and gave up the glory of the throne in heaven to be born of a virgin and be united to humanity and walk amongst his own creation, showing them love because he is a God that desires to be with his people.
SPEAKER_00: And he even took it further after his death on the cross and ascension to heaven when he gave his spirit to dwell inside of us, so that he no longer walks just amongst us, but within us.
SPEAKER_00: And that we are filled with his glory in the temple of our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture says that our body is his temple, and our body is his temple, and both are true, so that as individuals he fills us, and that as a community he empowers us to do the work of building his house.
SPEAKER_00: God has always intended that his people know that he dwell among us and that his presence should bring us peace.
SPEAKER_00: Shortly after Beth and I got married.
SPEAKER_00: I remember.
SPEAKER_00: We had come home from one of our first visits.
SPEAKER_00: We got married and we immediately moved to Colorado where I was going to seminary at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And we went and had coffee with my little sister who wasn't married yet.
SPEAKER_00: And she was talking to us and she's like, it's just so weird that you're married now.
SPEAKER_00: Is it weird, Beth?
SPEAKER_00: Like, does it does it feel different?
SPEAKER_00: She looks at Beth, she goes, Do you feel any different now that you're married?
SPEAKER_00: She goes, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: She goes, what's the main, what do you, what would you say the main difference is?
SPEAKER_00: And Beth, I'll never forget it.
SPEAKER_00: It touched me deeply.
SPEAKER_00: She paused really long.
SPEAKER_00: And she goes, You know, I'd have to say the main thing is just knowing that he's always there.
SPEAKER_00: And that was a real source of strength for her.
SPEAKER_00: And what I felt there, in comparison to the strength we should gain from God's presence with us and the fact that he has promised to never leave.
SPEAKER_00: Do you take comfort in knowing that he's with you?
SPEAKER_00: Do you take on tasks on your own that overwhelm you when he's saying, just let me help?
SPEAKER_00: Do you tremble in fear at the thought of sharing the gospel with a loved one?
SPEAKER_00: Because you feel inadequate to the cause.
SPEAKER_00: And he's going, I'm with you.
SPEAKER_00: Lean on me.
SPEAKER_00: Do you struggle to take positions of leadership you think he's pushing you towards in the church to grow others and build into their lives because you feel inadequate and he's going, but that's okay because I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not inadequate, and I am with you.
SPEAKER_00: See, he takes it a step further.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to know he's with us, and he wants it to give us peace.
SPEAKER_00: So much of Scripture talks about it.
SPEAKER_00: I'll read just a couple of verses.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 54, 10 says, Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord who has compassion on you.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 41.10 says, Fear not, for I am with you.
SPEAKER_00: Be not dismayed, for I am your God.
SPEAKER_00: I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
SPEAKER_00: So he wants us to get that he's with us, but more than just being with us, he wants us to understand that he is in control.
SPEAKER_00: He is in control, and that's where he points them.
SPEAKER_00: He points them and he says, I am with you, fear not, but in verse Six, right after that, he says, For thus says the Lord of hosts, yet more, yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.
SPEAKER_00: He's going, I'm gonna shake the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a God of power.
SPEAKER_00: This God that is with you is a God of power.
SPEAKER_00: See, we can have somebody with us in a difficult situation, but if they're powerless to help, what good does it do, right?
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have been in a tough situation and the person with you seemed to be of no help, with no power to help?
SPEAKER_00: Because just presence isn't enough if the one who is present with you is incapable, right?
SPEAKER_00: And how often do we place our faith in ones who are not capable?
SPEAKER_00: And so God is saying, not only am I with you, but I'm in control.
SPEAKER_00: And he and he and he kind of tells them the big scope and draws them down to a pinpoint and goes, if I can do all of this, then why can't I do this?
SPEAKER_00: And if I can do this, then why can't I do this?
SPEAKER_00: And it and he's going, look, I'm in control of all creation.
SPEAKER_00: He says, yet once more in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.
SPEAKER_00: So all of creation.
SPEAKER_00: But not just creation.
SPEAKER_00: He says, more specifically, the nations.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will shake the nations, so that the treasures of all the nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: He says, So I'm in control of everything, because he says, the silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord, and the latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts, and in this place, this specific place, I will grant peace.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm in control of all creation, I'm in control of all nations, I'm in control of this house that is before you.
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand his power?
SPEAKER_00: Do you recognize that he spoke us into creation?
SPEAKER_00: Do you recognize that nothing is out of his control?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's where he points his people.
SPEAKER_00: He points them to his overwhelming might.
SPEAKER_00: His overwhelming might.
SPEAKER_00: And in our lives, do we see this?
SPEAKER_00: When I was a little kid, my brother and I wanted to go camping.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we really wanted to rough it.
SPEAKER_00: We wanted to go 10, 20 feet away from the house.
SPEAKER_00: And because that's how long the extension cord was, so that we could put the little portable TV in the tent with us, with the fan, and we could go inside and pop the popcorn and bring it out.
SPEAKER_00: And so we had this tent going, and we had all these little blankets and stuff on there, and it was the cushiest tent in the world, and we had a light hanging from the ceiling off the extension cord, and we had a little TV going in there that we were trying to watch TV with, and we just thought we were the coolest things in the world, and we hadn't even, you know, it's not even really sleep time yet, right?
SPEAKER_00: And uh something scary happened.
SPEAKER_00: A brick came flying through our tent.
SPEAKER_00: And it came about this far from hitting us in the head.
SPEAKER_00: It just crashed through and ripped through that little tent structure, fell between our heads, and we're staring at a red brick, and we don't know where it came from.
SPEAKER_00: We run in the house, and we go, somebody's a bat's a brick, and my dad stood up and he ran outside.
SPEAKER_00: And he starts looking around the backyard.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees two teenage boys pop up and run, who were hiding behind this little electrical box.
SPEAKER_00: See, there were two teenage boys that thought it would be a funny trick to scare little kids, and so they threw the brick to scare us, but meanwhile, it could have knocked us in the head and caused serious damage.
SPEAKER_00: And when they saw my dad, who's not a small man, come out of the house, they got scared and they ran.
SPEAKER_00: And my dad, again, remember I said he's not a small man, but I've never seen him run like he ran that night.
SPEAKER_00: And he ran after those teenage boys and he caught them and he brings them back to our house, grabbing them by the backs of their jackets, and he brings them to the edge of the house and he goes, get in the house.
SPEAKER_00: And they go, I'm not going in the edge and he throws them in the house and he starts, he's like, tell me, give me your parents' name, number.
SPEAKER_00: We're called, I'm not telling you my parents.
SPEAKER_00: And he, man, but all of a sudden, whatever fear I had was gone because my dad was in control of that situation.
SPEAKER_00: And I felt peace.
SPEAKER_00: I felt peace because those that threatened me did not stand up to my dad.
SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, we have a father in heaven that no one can even think of threatening, that no one can outrun, that no one can escape.
SPEAKER_00: And as you have the task before you of building God's house, do you let man intimidate you, or do you recognize that your father in heaven is not only with you, but he is in complete control?
SPEAKER_00: It is a great source of strength.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, in light of this, that he is going to bring glory to this temple.
SPEAKER_00: It says the treasures of all nations in the ESV that's in your pew Bibles, but a lot of Bibles, and actually I like it a little bit more, it says the desired of all nations, that he's going to bring the desired of all nations.
SPEAKER_00: Because desired does not have to mean treasure.
SPEAKER_00: What we desire does not have to mean gold and silver.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's obviously a reference to gold and silver here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the gold is mine and the silver is mine.
SPEAKER_00: The tools you need to rebuild this temple I will bring.
SPEAKER_00: But there is something about that he is in control, and anything that is desired from the nations, that he can bring it to this temple.
SPEAKER_00: Because let me tell you what the Lord desires.
SPEAKER_00: You, your heart, your attention, your worship.
SPEAKER_00: And other scripture points us to this so that when he says to them, Look, I'm gonna bring the desired of the nations, and the gold is mine, and the silver is mine, and you're gonna have whatever you need to rebuild this temple.
SPEAKER_00: Other parts of scripture point us to this.
SPEAKER_00: See, now, first of all, recognize that as God says, the glory in this temple is gonna be greater than the glory in the former temple.
SPEAKER_00: It was not lost on him that in the future his son would be standing in front of this very same temple as he said, Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.
SPEAKER_00: And the Jews replied, It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and are you gonna raise it in three days?
SPEAKER_00: But the temple he had spoken of was his body.
SPEAKER_00: See, because he's gonna bring glory not only to the physical representation of this temple, but to the fulfillment of the temple and the prophecy of Jesus Christ, his son, who would come and bear our sins for us.
SPEAKER_00: And Revelation 21:2 talks of Jesus being the fulfillment of the temple again, where it says, I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
SPEAKER_00: The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp in us as the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This goes back to the task of undertaking the building of God's house, and we are the offering of the other nations that much of Scripture points us toward.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture speaks of us as the church, as an offering brought to God from the other nations, that Israel was meant to be a beacon and a light to draw the other nations in to proclaim the name of the Lord, that they would see Israel, and that they would say, Whoa, their God is something.
SPEAKER_00: And that we would come in and be grafted in and join to them in the worship of the one true God.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 2, starting in verse 2, it says, It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted above the hills, and all the nations shall flow to it.
SPEAKER_00: And many peoples shall come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths, for out of Zion shall go the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.
SPEAKER_00: Nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
SPEAKER_00: O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And we come from all the nations, as he draws that which he desires, our worship, out of the nations to his house.
SPEAKER_00: And we worship him there.
SPEAKER_00: Paul labored towards this.
SPEAKER_00: He mentions us as an offering.
SPEAKER_00: That he's laboring towards the gospel in the nations outside of Israel, so that we may be brought to God as an offering.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 2, 4 says, As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: As you tackle the overwhelming task of building the house of the Lord, find comfort in the fact that He is with us and that He is in control.
SPEAKER_00: And that He has seen you from the beginning, and that He has said time and time again, I want that nation to be with me.
SPEAKER_00: And that you are part of the fulfillment of that prophecy, and that as Christ is our temple and we are his body, we are joined together in him through the law and the prophets and the apostles, and that he will do the task.
SPEAKER_00: So as you leave here today, do you find peace in your God?
SPEAKER_00: Do you let the task overwhelm you anymore, or do you submit, not in your strength, but because of his great might, do you say, though I am weak, I know you can use me.
SPEAKER_00: Because you are not limited.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we come before you thankful.
SPEAKER_00: Thankful, moved, feeling unworthy and yet joyful that you have chosen to be with us.
SPEAKER_00: That though you have a throne in heaven, you desire to dwell amongst us as well.
SPEAKER_00: We ask that in our individual hearts you would convince us of your power and presence, and that that would contribute to us as a body, building your kingdom, building your house in this community, reaching the peoples that do not know you for the sake of your glory.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.