Building up the Body 1984

I'd like to begin today by reading the first nine verses of the Prophet Haggai, Chapter 1. In the second year of Darius the King, in the sixth month on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, This people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet.

Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? Now therefore consider, says the Lord of Hosts, how have you fared? You have sown much and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill.

You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages earns wages to put them in a bag with holes. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, Consider how you have fared.

Go up to the hills and bring wood and build a house that I may take pleasure in and that I may appear in my glory, says the Lord. You have looked for much, and lo, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away.

Why, says the Lord of Hosts, because of my house that lies in ruins while you busy yourselves each with his own house. The thing those people didn't understand was that their personal destiny was tied, whether they liked it or not, to the destiny of the temple. They could live in their paneled houses, but as long as they lived in their paneled houses while that temple still lay there in ruins, their lives in their paneled houses would be empty.

Build the temple. Raise it up from its ruins. Transform it into a real house of prayer.

Cause it to be a habitation of God through the Spirit in the midst of his people. Then, their lives too, their individual personal lives will begin to enjoy the blessing, the peace, the healing, the quickening, the life of God. These people had the idea that they could have their own little private contract with God and so avoid the trouble and the work of having to get together and build that temple again.

That temple which had been destroyed some 70 years before and burned. But as long as that temple lay there in ruins, their personal lives would be empty and barren. And so Haggai the prophet comes and says as much.

He says, you're never going to have personal revival, any kind of real life, until you first take care of corporate revival. Until you get together, become one, and raise that temple once again. And to us, the prophet Haggai says, basically the same thing.

You want personal revival? You want personal vision? Raise up a true dwelling place for the Spirit of God in your midst. That temple built with living stones. Contribute something of yourself for the building up, the true building up of the body of Christ.

And then you yourself will come to life. From Ephesians chapter 2 verse 19. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. If there's any message that the Spirit of God has been bringing to us over the last few months, if there's any message that can be regarded as coming from the Lord and received from him as a way to begin, 1984, it's this. That for those of us who have been called by God to function in the body of Christ in this congregation, our personal destiny is tied much, much more closely to the destiny of this flock than we had ever dreamed.

Most of us are rugged individualists. We go out there and take care of business on our jobs and in our ministries and we look upon this assembly as a check-in point, a place where we touch base with each other, worship the Lord, break bread, and then get out there and get to it again. And it's good that we see that the major place for our exercising of our ministries, our serving of God, as being outside the walls of this building.

And it is. It is outside the walls. But what we haven't understood as clearly as we are now being shown is that our effectiveness outside the walls, our power to bring good news to the poor, deliverance to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, is dependent on what goes on among us.

What happens in here, not necessarily the walls, but in our relationships with each other. Reading that passage from Ephesians again, 2.19, So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows together into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Now, the dwelling place of God in the Spirit is the body.

It's this living temple made of living stones. It's this organism of which each of us is meant to be a member, a part. The true dwelling place of the Spirit of God in this world is not the individual believer.

The dwelling place of the Spirit of God on this earth is the body, the unified body. Now, our physical bodies become the temple of the Holy Spirit only to the extent that we are in fact joined to the larger body. Put it another way.

If we are individually failing to contribute to the life of the body, to edify it, to build it up, then we're dreaming if we think we're going to have any kind of healing for the sickness of the world out there. See, if in our relationships with each other we are distant, indifferent, if these relationships are broken by resentments or attitudes, then the Spirit is hindered. Hindered not only when we're in here trying to worship God, but also hindered when we're out there seeking to proclaim the kingdom of God and manifest the kingdom of God in our daily life.

And the truth is that our corporate life, our body life, our life together, this life into which we have all been called to function as members of each other in this body is in many ways like that temple, that ruined temple that greeted the Israelites or the people from Judah when they finally came back from captivity in Babylon. The situation is similar. You know, if we are busy with our own houses as they were with theirs, while the temple lies in ruins, and if we're busy with our own houses taking care of our own lives and our own affairs, while the body itself is incomplete, maybe you don't think of it as being in ruins, but we surely all agree that it's incomplete.

See, individual lives are also going to suffer and the body life will never be what it was meant to be until we get our priorities right here. From Haggai again, verse 7. Thus says the Lord of hosts, Consider how you have fared. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build a house that I may take pleasure in it, that I may appear in my glory, says the Lord.

Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house. Now, we all agree that the one who builds the church is Jesus. On this rock I will build my church and the gates of death will not prevail against it.

But he builds his church through us. Each of us contributes to the life of the body, edifies the body, builds it up. Now we're going to stop for a moment here and we're going to ask Lois and Larry.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Thank you. Okay, we'll let Gene and Lois will take care of Leroy.

We'll go on now. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build a house. Each of us is called, first of all, to contribute to the life of the body.

Reading from Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11. And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets and evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. And we will be alive and come to the knowledge of the Son of God and be built up like this only when each of us sees himself as a gift to the body.

We may not all be apostles or evangelists or prophets, but every member of the body is a gift to the body. Each one is ordained by God to convey life to the body. You know, we're not gathered together here primarily to take and receive, but primarily to give.

To give life. Basically to give life. And we will give life to the body when we go up to the hills and bring wood.

That is, when we go up to Calvary and join ourselves to the death of Jesus allowing his death to work in our mortal flesh so that the life of the Lord may flow out of us into the body. And this is what Paul describes so clearly all through 2 Corinthians, but particularly in this passage in 2 Corinthians 4-8. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies.

For while we live, we are always being delivered up to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death isn't working in us, but life in you. What was Paul doing? He was going up to the hills, getting wood.

He was joining himself to the death of Jesus, allowing the death of the Lord to work in his mortal flesh, to slay it, so that through him, life could flow out into the body. And when we do the same, when we take the trouble, for instance, to die to ourselves enough, to take the trouble to pray for our brothers and sisters, when we take the trouble to really go out of our way for them, you know, really care about them, weep with them, rejoice with them, decrease that they may increase, take hold of their burdens, and then humble ourselves enough so that they can also take hold of our burdens. We're conveying life to the body.

We're bringing it to life. Go up to the hills and bring wood. Build a house.

Each of us is called by the Lord to minister or to convey or to sustain unity in the body. Unity. From Ephesians 4, verse 1. I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you've been called in all lowliness and meekness, with patience for bearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Now, there's only one church worldwide, only one body. Every assembly of believers is a manifestation or meant to be a manifestation of that one body. But when walls come up between us, as they do and have, and when we drift away from each other in indifference, then that unity is marred and destroyed.

On the other hand, when I join myself to the cross and allow the death of the Lord to work in me, I can then approach the body with something that's going to preserve that unity. And each of us is responsible to preserve the unity of the body, to sustain it somehow. If I live under the power of the cross and draw near by that power to my brothers and sisters in my prayers, with my physical presence, with my encouragement, then I preserve unity.

If, on the other hand, I busy myself with myself, and if I, as I do that, and often when we do the one, we do the other, busy myself with myself, and on the other hand become negative toward everybody else, not only do I suffer, the body suffers. Because whether I like it or not, the destiny of my life and the destiny of the body's life are tied together. Go up to the hills, bring wood, and build a house.

Each of us is called by God to contribute to the growth of the body. I'm not talking about numerical growth, but spiritual growth. Numerical growth will take care of itself.

It's not a matter of how bulky it is, but whether it has muscle, whether it's able to get the job done in the body. And each of us is called to contribute to that kind of growth, to growing up, if we grow up in the spirit. And so we read again in Ephesians 4, verse 14, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness and deceitful wiles, every new gospel that comes along and offers people, you know, manna and God at the same time, or, you know, whatever.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the Christ, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and abilds itself in love. And so the body is built up when we speak the truth in love to each other, when we fit in with each other, when we allow ourselves to be knit together. And each of us has to ask, am I really contributing to that kind of growth? Am I living under the power of the cross in my relationship with my brothers and sisters? Am I speaking the truth in love? Is the body, in fact, being built up through me? Go up to the hills and bring wood and build a house.

Each of us is called to contribute to the ministry of the body. Read that 16th verse one more time. From whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and abilds itself in love.

So whenever the part is working properly, what is the body doing? It's doing precisely what Jesus did when he was here in flesh and blood. Corporately now, we together do what he did. We bring good news to the poor, deliverance to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed.

And each of us contributes to the body's ability to do this. For instance, the more we serve each other, the more the body together will be able to serve the purpose of God out there in the world. The more we wash each other's feet, the more the body will have the cleansing power of the Lord for the world out there.

Thus says the Lord of Hosts, Consider how you have fared. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build a house that I may take pleasure in it and that I may appear in my glory, says the Lord. You have looked for much, and lo, it came to little.

And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? says the Lord of Hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while you busy yourselves each with his own house.

The time has come for all of us, without exception, to repent of our preoccupation with our own house and our own life and to get on with building a habitation of God in the spirit. If we will get serious about going up to the hills and bringing wood and building a house, we will see the glory of the Lord among us, here, and in our personal private lives as never before. Let's just take some time in silence and ask the Spirit to show us specifically things that he would have us do that would enable us to bring wood and build a house.

We ask the Lord God that you would help us to be delivered from our fear of becoming too bound up with other people, our fear that it is going to impinge and limit our freedom, and show us the bondage we are always in when we try to stay free. Help us to practically now become bond slaves of Jesus and true servants of each other. In the coming year especially.

We just look for this and look for your guidance and help that we can begin to do this far more effectively than we ever have in the past. We ask it in Jesus' name.