In this sermon, the preacher begins by reminding the audience of the words spoken by the apostles of Jesus Christ about the presence of mockers in the last days who would follow their own ungodly desires. He emphasizes the importance of believers building themselves up on their most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit. The preacher then references 1 Corinthians 3:10, where Paul describes himself as a wise master-builder who has laid the foundation of Jesus Christ. He urges the audience to carefully consider how they build upon this foundation. The sermon concludes with a call to recognize that God desires something permanent and wonderful for each believer, and encourages them to set their hearts on this vision.

I want you to turn with me to a text or two in the New Testament, and then we shall go back into the Old. In the little book of Jude, just preceding the book of Revelation, verse seventeen, But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. What I want you to notice is the phrase, building up yourselves. If you would turn with me now to First Corinthians, and in First Corinthians, chapter three, verse ten, According to the grace of God which is given unto me, As a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon, for out of the foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. I want then tonight to talk to you about building in relationship to ourselves. It was laid on my heart, and had I spoken last night, it would have drawn your attention to it. But having more time tonight, perhaps it is as well I didn't briefly touch upon it. I want really, bearing those scriptures in mind, to turn back with you, or you with me, please, into the Old Testament, and into the second book of Chronicles. We shall refer back into the first book too. But here I want you to let your eye fall with me onto the second chapter of second Chronicles, and verse two, verse one of chapter two. Solomon determined to build. Solomon determined to build. I wonder if you are determined to build. Are you? Answer your own heart. Are you? I didn't say are you asking or wanting to build. I am asking you whether you are determined that you are going to build. I want to say this to you. Whether or not you determine to build as God wants you to build, you are building. And you have been building since you are old enough in these realms to build. You have been building something. You have been building a character. You have been building a life. Some of you talk about you have been building a business, and all the other things that men speak about. You are a builder. That is the thing that you have to understand. But there came a time in, actually, in David, Solomon's father, in his heart, when he knew the time had come to build the house of God. You will know this great man, David, and how he had this great son, Solomon. His name was Peaceful. What a wonderful name. First of all, perhaps we ought to remind ourselves that unless you are a peaceful man, unless that is you have been brought to peace by God, you will not be able to build what God wants built. So will you settle that? Whether you are in peace. Now be honest, because we are on serious things. Not asking you whether you believe that Jesus Christ made peace through the blood of his cross, we have already been reminded that, not tonight, but before in our coming together, that it is so easy to quote verses. So easy to quote verses. And we become so well versed too in the Bible, and in the knowledge of the Bible. Are you, you are sitting down there now, are you in peace? Because you will never be able to build what God wants building, until you come into utter peace. David wanted to build, you may remember. We will look at it. Go back into the first book of Chronicles, and we will find about it. The idea of building for God had come into David's heart many years before this verse, to which I am going to tell you, turn you. It suddenly came to his mind one day. These things, he said them to a prophet in the nation called Nathan. He said, I am dwelling in a house, and yet the ark of God dwelleth in curtains. That's what he said. He realised that somehow he'd got this all wrong. There is a time, you know, when you waken up to truth. If you haven't, and if you have not experienced a time in your life when you suddenly realised something, you are hardly alive. The sudden realisation must come to your heart. You know how David had that ark of God. He had gone and brought it back, and he had pitched a tent for it in Jerusalem. And he put the ark there in the tent, and there he used to go to worship, and unto the majesty that dwelt within that tent he composed many songs, and sang them, and brought the children of Israel to the place of singing and rejoicing. It was very wonderful. Then it struck him one day that this was all out of place somehow. It just wasn't right. He wanted to build something permanent. And you know, it's absolutely true, beloved. In some people's experiences, God has such a sort of an in and out, a moving experience. That's what happened in those days, when the tent of the tabernacle, as it was called, the tabernacle of God was moved from place to place. The ark had to be moved. It had to be taken and pitched somewhere else, and pitched somewhere else, and pitched somewhere else, as though God was on a pilgrimage. But there came a time when they realised that the thing had got to be settled. It had got to be firmly fixed. And there are too many people who want to keep God on a kind of a pilgrimage, almost following them around. They sing a psalm like, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And it has a wonderful truth about it, but there has to come a progressive realisation to our hearts that God is wanting much more than many of these things that they had. You must realise, and get this deeply into your heart, it's the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant position. You got Paul's great authority for this. He was an apostle of the Lord. Amen. And he wrote and he said, we, that is the Jews, we were children. We were under schoolmasters. We were always being led on, led on, till Jesus Christ came. You can find that in the Galatian letter. He said we were underage. We were really like children, but when you read about a man like David or some of these other people, you think, my children, they were good giants. Well, that's Paul, speaking on behalf of his nation. He said, we were under bondage, we were like children, we hadn't really learned, we hadn't got the full revelation, and so on. Well, that's just how lots of people are. David, though, as we realise, if we turn our eyes back to the first Chronicles, chapter 22, had come to a place after the realisation that a house surely had to be built for God. Take him out from behind curtains, veils, take him out from tentage, and let him be put somewhere in your estimation, in your reckoning, in your consideration of him. Come to the place and say, oh God, surely you ought to have something absolutely permanent and unchanging in me. Is your life like the barometer goes up and down? Is it? Have you come to a stable, glorious experience that God wants you to have? Amen. And I'm looking in chapter 22 of first Chronicles where we read David saying this, this is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel. He'd found the place where the house of God had to be built. He'd been all over the place. He'd fought here, he'd gone there, he'd conquered giants, he'd led armies, he'd done all kinds of things. But at last, through tragedy in his own life, and not only in his own life but in the nation, he came at last to realize that the trouble with everything was that God was not where he ought to be in the life of the nation and in the life of individuals. He'd got through into his own troubles simply because he had not kept the Lord central, dominant, and in true authority in his own life. He'd let his feelings, he'd let his emotions, he'd let his desires run away with him. This man who you would have thought had kept an iron hand on everything concerning his life, who wrote wondrous psalms, who played beautifully on the harp, who'd done so many things and told people to praise God and praise God and praise God and let everything that hath breath praise the Lord and make a high-sounding cymbal noise, and I don't know what, he came to the place where he realized this great thing. Amen. Oh may God bring hearts to this realization in this tent tonight. Something is wrong. Let's read a little higher up in chapter 21, shall we? At that time, verse 28, when David saw that the Lord had answered him in the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there. For the tabernacle of the Lord, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of the burnt offering, were at the season in the high place of Gibeon, that David could not go before it to inquire of God, for he was afraid because of the sword of the angel of the Lord. Then David said, this is the house of God. Moses built the tabernacle in the wilderness. David had been shown that the house of God had got to be built in Jerusalem. Rather different. God was quite a realist. He realized that if he was going to lead the children of Israel into the promised land, they couldn't carry a big house round with them. He faced reality. I wish you would do it. I wish everybody would do it. If there's one thing that God has, it's plenty of common sense. He let them make him a tent. In fact, he ordered it. Isn't it a marvellous thing? I don't know whether you come to the realization in your life that God has allowed you to do lots of things. And he has even ordered all kinds of things and you know he has. And you think that that's the end of the matter, but it isn't. He's still going on. He still wants more. He still wants stability. He wants to be established in your life. He wants it to be absolutely right. He doesn't want you to be up and down. He doesn't want you to go around in circles. He doesn't want you to be this and that and the other. He doesn't want you to make excuses. He doesn't want you to be ever seeking the counsel of elders. He doesn't want you to be doing that kind of thing. He wants you to come into this glorious established position in your life where you know that he has achieved his ultimate end so far as you're concerned whilst you are here down on this earth. That's the wonderful position that he wants. I don't know how many of us in this room, in this tent, want that. To come into this glorious and wonderful position that God has for us. Beloved, believe it, but right deep down in his heart God wants you to be a man and a woman of God in your entirety. That's what he wants. David said, this is the house of God. There was no house of God there. If you read carefully, in fact I touched upon it. It was in the threshing floor of all men, the Jebusites. There were no pillars there. There were no bricks there. There was nothing there. Just the implements of threshing. David said, this is the house of God. That's what he said. And you know why he said it and why he came to this great realization? It was because earlier, as I have said, he'd come to this glorious position of knowing that God wanted permanency He'd come there a long time before this and from that moment on he was looking for it. But David, aren't you blessed enough? David, aren't you great enough? David, haven't you done enough? No. And when David did finally die and go on to be with the Lord, he died in this great ambition, in this tremendous desire. It never left him. He was going to see it done. In fact, he told Nathan the prophet that he was going to do it. And be careful if you're relying on prophets, won't you? Too many people are relying on prophets. And prophets are just as human and make as many mistakes as other people do too. For Nathan told him to get on with it. And then David wrapped Nathan over, I'm sorry, God wrapped Nathan over the knuckles, if I may use that phrase. He said, oh no, David can't build this house. He's shed too much blood. He is not a man of peace. He's a man of war. So, if you're in warfare, even if you think you're fighting God's enemies, for that's what David had been doing, you won't build the temple. It has to be built by men and women of peace. I came to this conclusion many, many decades ago. Amen. What a tremendous revelation it is to look into the word of God and let him speak deeply into your heart. For beloved, he is after a condition of peace and tranquility in your life that may be a thousand light years away from your experience as it is now. And he wants to cross the great divide. He wants to span the years. You remember last night we were told that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years is one day. And he can move right in and bring us to this great and glorious truth. So, from that moment, when David came to this realization, he started to prepare. Look in chapter 22 with me, verse 3, David prepared. And in verse 5, David said, Solomon my son is young and tender. Isn't that lovely? I want to tell you this, only tender people build the house of God. You don't need armor on to build God's house. Only tender people. You don't have to be especially old either. Perhaps I ought to be speaking in the youth tent. Solomon, my son is young and tender. And the house that is to be built for the Lord must be exceedingly magnificent. You can imagine how I felt last night when Norman used that very phrase, exceeding magnificent. You did, didn't you? Do you remember? Yeah, I remembered. I thought, Lord, he's leading me right in. But then he led me out. Here is the great and, oh, and I'm glad, please. I really am. Here is the great thing. I love it, you know. Exceeding magnificent. If you've got a poetic heart, if you've got a heart of love and don't think in little squares, you will appreciate that. Of course, in modern translation, it would be exceedingly magnificent. Oh, what's that to be compared with the poetry of? Exceeding magnificent. Glory, God. Why don't you be something loving and lovable and get those set squares and rulers out of your mind? Here is the wonderful thing that God wants you to understand. Amen. This thing, he says, is going to be exceedingly magnificent of fame and of glory throughout all countries. I will, therefore, now make preparation for it so David prepared abundantly before his death. Hallelujah. He set his heart on it. God had given him the revelation. He'd seen what was not yet in being on the earth. He'd got the vision. Doesn't mean to say he sort of looked as though he was in a swoon and his eyes rolled back and up into the back of his head or something that some people try to trump up as though they're having visions. Here is the great thing. He saw this thing in his heart. Amen. Man of vision. Amen. You know, we're here tonight, if I may make a local reference, because a man named Malcolm Ford was a man of vision. He still is. That's right. There are too few people who have vision. Lots of people have visions. But they aren't men and women of vision. But this man saw it. Glory. And he began to prepare for what he'd seen. Now, I want to ask you, have you seen this thing? Have you seen this house of God? In those days, it was built as a house. You know, it was given the name of a temple. But I want you to notice that that is not what David called it. He said it's the house of the Lord God. Get the word temple out of your mind now. You will immediately have switched to it in your thinking if you're well-versed in Scripture and well-taught in some church or fellowship. Immediately, you'll go to that. But that's not the way it started. Do you understand that? It started off in Scripture as a house of God, somewhere for God to live. Not God to be praised. Keep that clear. Not God to be served. Keep that clear. Not God to be worshipped. Keep that clear. Somewhere for God to live. Amen. A permanent place. That is exactly what he wanted. Something that couldn't be blown about. I don't know whether you've done what I did tonight. Sitting down, I can see it happening now. I looked up several times at this canvas room, and I saw what the wind was doing to it. I thought, well, I hope the wind doesn't get up too much. I get cold enough when there's a cover over. But here's the great thing. Something that can't be blown about. Something that can't be carried around. Something that can't be moved. Something that can't be shaken. Something that's permanent. Where are you, beloved, in these great matters? Have you realized that you are the builder? Do you realize it turns on you? We sang, O come in power and fill thy temple. We were looking to the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Ghost. We could, if we had time, take this thing into its complete fulfillment in the second book of Corinthians. But, at the moment, we're on this emphasis. Somebody had to build the temple. Is it you? That's what I'm asking. You may be young and tender. You can be old and tender, too. Unfortunately, some people, as they grow older, get harder and tougher. They lose their tenderness. It seems to go. The sweetness passes away. What a tragedy. They get mixed up in this room called Parenthood. You've seen it, of course. Here is the great thing. Seem to lose that tenderness, that touch of God, that breath of the Spirit. Now may God open all our hearts to Him. Look in verse 6. He called for Solomon, his son, charged him to build a house for the Lord God of Israel. May I tell you again, take no temple. That's not spoken about. A house. That's the big thing. David said to Solomon, my son, as for me, it was in my mind to build an house unto the name of the Lord my God. For the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars. Thou shalt not build a house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight. I mustn't stop on too many stories, but I can recall a precious man. He'd come over to England for a conference. He had come from one of the European countries, and I'd been preaching, and probably said something along these lines. I don't know. And afterwards he came to me. He had been very high up in the German army. He was a baron, and he said, How about me? I've ordered men to death. I've ordered people to be killed. It must be terrible. Must be terrible. The Spirit of God got hold of that man, and he was really going through it inside. I don't know about you, brother, sister. I don't know about you. But I do know this. Perhaps you'll listen to what I said to him. I said, Brother, if you turn to the Lord, the Lord can completely forgive that. It must be terrible to have to put your head on a pillow at night and think about the thousands you may have added to the death row. It must be terrible, mustn't it? Or to think you put your thumb on a button and vaporize cities. I don't belong to any particular party on these things. But I know this, beloved. David was not allowed to do it, because he was a man of war. It was in the days when it was recognized to be right to go to war for God too. And God said, No, you can't touch this. What a great thing it is, beloved, to understand. May God, in His forgiveness and in His mercy, hover upon us tonight as we look on these great truths together. That He may give us understanding of what He means, what He wants us to do. And God said to him, verse 10, speaking of Solomon, He said, He shall build a house for mine, and he shall be my son, and I will be his father. And I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever. Now, my son, the Lord be with thee, and prosper thou, and build the house of the Lord thy God, as he has said unto thee, of thee only the Lord give thee wisdom and understanding, and give thee charge concerning Israel, that thou mayest keep the law of the Lord thy God. Verse 14, Now behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the Lord an hundred thousand talents of gold, a thousand talents of silver, and of brass, and iron, without weight, for it is in abundance. And so he goes on, this great man prepared for it. Listen, it had got to come. It had got to be done. That's the thing for us all to grasp. It must be done. Settle your heart on that. Whatever your experience is, know this, that God wants something absolutely permanent and wonderful when He is thinking of you. No standard too high, nothing so great that you can't reach unto it. Nothing that by His Spirit He cannot accomplish in you. Nothing. Everything. You can take heart and know what God has for us during these days and on into permanence in the days that lie ahead. When we part from this place, let's go on quickly. If you have time, not now of course, you can read through these chapters that I am missing over. And what you will find is that David so set his heart on this, that he reorganised the whole nation. He pointed the whole nation unto this end. He reorganised, if you like, the politics of the country. He reorganised the priesthood. He reorganised the army. He reorganised everything on this very thing. He made the whole of the nation move toward this end. Glory be to the name of the Lord. Wouldn't that be wonderful if our nation was organised like this? To do the will of God or any nation on the face of the earth. Bless the name of the Lord. You know, I was talking with some dear people from Romania last night. They are here with us and I expect we shall know more about them before the end of the week. And you know, as we was, was it their mind? No, perhaps it wasn't. I get forgetful these days. And I said, there is one thing that's been proved in Europe and it's this, that communism doesn't work. He said, hear, hear. Amen. And it doesn't seem to me that democracy is working either, so far as God is concerned. And I want to know, beloved, whether your heart is. And I ask you this, in the name of our Lord Jesus, are you thinking this way? Are you thinking that everything, all I possess, all that I am, everything I have anything, any influence over, it is all going to be for this? Think before you answer. Oh Lord. Well, where shall we, where shall we read? Let's go on into chapter 28. We can't go through all the reorganising process. You cannot get over it. You will find it's repeated, some of this stuff in this 28th chapter. But he comes down onto this truth in verse 7, chapter 28. In the congregation of the Lord, and in the audience of our God, keep and seek for all the commandments of the Lord your God, that you may possess this good land, and leave it for an inheritance for your children after you. The building of the temple, as we come later to see it, and its permanence decided whether they would inherit their land. This wonderful promised land. It turned around this. The time had come. You may say, well God's been faithful to me, God's done this, and God's done that, and God has done the other. But beloved, that's all looking back into the past. The future. You know, when I was young, they taught me to sing in a Methodist Sunday school, the hymn, the future belongs to the children, though much to the past we may owe, and so on. Perhaps you've never been a Methodist. It might be your loss. What a tremendous truth. God wants us to see this, beloved. We'll go on, shall we? Into verse 9, he turns to Solomon, My son, know thou that the God of thy, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart, and with a willing mind. For the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts. If thou seek him, he will be found of thee, but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off forever. Remember, take heed now, for the Lord hath chosen thee to build a house for the sanctuary. Again, not so that he may be praised, notice. Not so that you may come and run your services, notice. To build a house for the sanctuary. Be strong and do it. And then, you read on in verse 11, David gave him the patent. He gave him the patent for it in verse 11. Verse 12, he gave the patent, and he gave the patent for the courses of the priests in verse 13, and verse 14, he went beyond words, and he gave gold by weight, and so on. Somewhere, it must have dawned on Solomon's young heart that his father meant it. He'd gone beyond talking about vision. He'd gone beyond talking about how this should be done, and how that should be done. He'd gone beyond into giving of his substance. He meant it. He knew he couldn't do what he wanted to do, but at least he gave all he could possibly give. Anything that the house of the Lord should be built. What a tremendous truth it is. Chapter 29, Furthermore David the king said unto all the congregation, Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet strong, is yet young and tender, and the work is great. For the palace, oh, it was to be a house, you see. A palatial house is not for man, but for the Lord God. Now I have prepared, verse 2, and verse 3, moreover because I have set my affection to the house of my God, I have of mine own proper good of gold and silver which I have given to the house of my God, over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house. And away he goes. Here's a man that was prepared to go over and above all that could possibly be expected of him for the building of the house of his God.