Consider Your Ways

Well, good morning, everyone. Appreciate the special music very much. We got a double dose from Ray Clore this morning. Very nice words to that piece. Now, I came in this morning and I was really surprised to find that there were empty seats all up down this part of the room. Those of you that are here every week usually know that everything's reserved because the Creech and Phelps clan are in town. But then I realized, oh, this is the family gathering in Tennessee this weekend, so there were plenty of seats for my family to sit there and the Clore family to sit there as well.

So it's a neat trick that Ray Clore has when he speaks to bring all of his family in. So it helps the one giving the sermon as well. But welcome to all who are visiting here today. Thanksgiving weekend is always a busy weekend for the church as well as for our nation with everybody traveling and visiting. We usually are in North Canton on this particular Sabbath, but this year we delayed our trip there with our family for another week.

As in many other congregations, there will be lots of new faces and visitors because of the national holiday. But I hope all of you had a very good Thanksgiving whatever your plans were and whatever you did. I hope nobody burned a turkey or I just smoked a turkey. I didn't burn a turkey. But everything turned out well in our house and I hope that it did for you. In the book of Acts, there's a story that is a very dramatic story of a man by the name of Stephen who gets himself in a bit of hot water because of his fiery preaching and his very pointed remarks.

He gets himself called before the Jewish leaders and he gives a very spirited defense in chapter 7 of Acts for his faith. At one point, Stephen probably turns and I imagine that he points to a building that dominates the entire skyline of the ancient city of Jerusalem. It's a building called the Temple, the Second Temple. The Temple built and rebuilt by the Jews and then refurbished by Herod the Great. I imagine Stephen turning to that Temple at a critical moment in his defense and in something far better than any Hollywood script writer could ever put together, he says, The Most High does not dwell in buildings made with hands.

And that just shoots and undermines all the theological credibility that the Jewish leaders and their nation and their theology had to that point. It did also inflame their passions and anger and resulted in Stephen being martyred. Now let's go back to Stephen's statement. If his statement is true and it is true, it is part of Holy Scripture, that the Most High does not dwell in buildings made with hands, and the corollary to that statement is, if God does not dwell in temples made with hands, where does he dwell?

Where does he dwell? And that's the question that I want to answer for us today and for us to consider because it has very important ramifications for you and I today. The answer to that story, however, begins in an older story many, many years prior to even the time of Stephen. The answer to that story we can pick up along the thread way back in the year 538 B.C. Now that is ancient history. That's really ancient, ancient, almost ancient history to go back that far in our time travels and to consider an answer to a question that's relevant to us today.

But as with all aspects of the biblical teaching and biblical story, every part of it does fit together in a whole and has application to you and I today because we do remember what the Apostle Paul said, that everything written about the people of God in the Bible was written for our admonition upon whom the end of the age has come. And so we, looking back, have a lot to learn from just about any point in which we want to dip into the story in the Bible.

But this one will help us to, at this point, begin to answer the question that I put to you, where does God dwell and why that is important to us. Let's go back to the book of Ezra, chapter 1. Ezra, the first chapter. And let me just set the scene for you. Ezra opens in his story in the year 538. We can just use that and kind of put a pin in the board at that particular date for our purposes here today because it is in that year that a Persian king by the name of Cyrus, known in history as Cyrus the Great, foretold by the prophet Isaiah to have even existed about 150 years before his birth and to, having been predicted even by God, to have been the conqueror of Babylon.

That same Cyrus, Cyrus the Great, issued a decree that allowed the Jews who had been taken captive in Babylon to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. Now this was a part of a prophecy that had been even uttered by Jeremiah the prophet. Before the city of Jerusalem had fallen to the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, there had been the promise that there would be a return and even the number of years specified. And when Nebuchadnezzar had taken the city, he destroyed that temple. It was a temple that Solomon had built. And by all accounts that we have in the Bible, it was a beautiful structure and even as beautiful as the second temple being rebuilt and refurbished by Herod the Great, that was the one which Christ and the apostles came.

What Solomon put together was even greater and more elaborate, wealthier, costlier materials and unique. Unique in this sense because in that first temple, the one built by Solomon, there had been the presence of God. But that had come to a close with the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the entire way of life, the deportation of the majority of the Jewish population to Babylon. And then in 538 comes this decree by Cyrus saying the Jews can return to Jerusalem to rebuild this city, which is what happens as we pick up the story here in Ezra, the first chapter.

And we can look at the decree that Cyrus gave in verse 2. It says, Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord God of heaven, has given me. And he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah.

Now most of the kings of this period of time, they felt that they ruled over all of the earth. Technically they didn't, but they had quite a bit of power over the majority of the nations in that area we call the Middle East, but they didn't get over here to Batavia or Claremont County, Ohio in their day.

And so they were not over all of the earth, but they like to exaggerate and elaborate their decrees. And any time a dictator-type king like Cyrus made a decree, he can say whatever he wants to say. And he also knew this, that God had commanded him to rebuild at Jerusalem his house. And so the statement went to the Jews who were in Babylon that Cyrus had just taken control of. He says, Who among you is among you of all of his people? May his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel.

He is God, which is in Jerusalem. Persians had a very wide-open approach toward the gods of the nations that they conquered. Much different from that of Babylon. In fact, as we will see here, Cyrus is going to even return all of the costly instruments and vessels of the temple back with these Jews and allow them to take them back. Nebuchadnezzar had taken them into his temple as a sign of showing that he and his gods were stronger than the gods of any of the nations that he conquered.

And so Cyrus has a whole different approach. Verse 4, he says, Whoever is left in any place where he dwells, let the men of his place help him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, besides the free-will offerings for the house of God, which is in Jerusalem. And so they began, and they gathered up, and the heads of the fathers of the houses of Judah and Benjamin, along with priests and Levites that were there, and all whose spirits God had moved, arose to go and to build the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem.

Now, there are estimates of anywhere from 42,000 to 45,000 Jews who returned. This did not include every single Jew that had been deported to Babylon. We know that not everyone went back. We know of one in particular who didn't. His name is Daniel. He stayed behind in Babylon. He was much older at this time, and we have no record that Daniel went.

In fact, the book of Daniel indicates that he lived out his days in Babylon, and no doubt others did as well. But upwards of 45,000, perhaps, of them did go back, and they had assistance with financial means to accomplish what they did. All of those who were around them encouraged them with articles of silver and gold and goods and livestock and precious things besides all that was willingly offered. King Cyrus also brought out the articles of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken from Jerusalem and put in the temple of his gods.

And Cyrus, king of Persia, brought them out by the hand of Mithradath. The treasurer counted them out to Sheesh Bazar, the prince of Judah. And that was returned as well. Again, a completely different policy, national policy by the Persians as opposed to the way the Babylonians did things. And, of course, even allowing the Jews to return was not only according to prophecy, but it was to accomplish a very important part in God's purpose and God's plan. And so, a very arduous, difficult journey began.

It took them several months, as they would have probably gone in the route that was not a direct route, but a circuitous route that took them up through what is modern-day Syria and down through Lebanon along what was called the Via Maris and the well-known ancient road that can still be seen today that traveled that region as they then entered the area of Israel, ancient Israel likely from the north and went all the way down to the city of Jerusalem and began the process to rebuild.

In chapter 3 of Ezra, after a chapter that gives a lot of names and details there, we find that they came in chapter 3 and they returned to rebuild what was theirs to do.

In verse 1, it says, when the seventh month had come and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered together as one man to Jerusalem. Joshua, the son of Joseph Ek, and his brethren of the priests, and Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and his brethren, arose and built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it as it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God.

So they began the process through an altar to allow burnt offerings. Zerubbabel was the grandson of the last king of Jerusalem. He is obviously one of the leaders here. He comes out and stands out very strong. It goes on in verse 3 and it says, though fear had come upon them, because of the people of those countries, they set up the altar on its basis and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, both morning and evening burnt offerings.

They also kept the Feast of Tabernacles as it is written, and offered the daily offerings and the number required by ordinance for each day. And so they began to accomplish the work.

Verse 8 tells us, the restoration of this work began. And all those who had gathered together to accomplish this were encouraged. They were enthused. They had a new infusion of meaning and purpose in their life, which came essentially seven decades after the destruction of Jerusalem. But the hope and the dream of rebuilding something, and they all knew about the prophecy of Jeremiah, was something that fueled them.

And these people then who went back were renewed with a sense of mission and vision and purpose. And they had a real strong zeal to accomplish this particular task of rebuilding the temple. It's hard for us to imagine just how important that temple was to the people of God in that day.

We don't look to a temple today in that sense, but it was the center of their entire religious life, their entire national life. It was a White House, a state capital, a Supreme Court building, and a great cathedral essentially all wrapped up into one building for these people. That's what it was. It was everything around which their entire national identity revolved.

And so, to rebuild that was the center of their vision and their mission. Verse 11 says that they sang responsibly. They praised God. They gave thanks to the Lord, saying, He is good as mercy endures forever toward Israel, toward His people.

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. And so they began that process. But then there's a footnote almost put in here because it says, Many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers' houses, old men who'd seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this temple was laid before their eyes, yet many shouted aloud with joy.

They wept because it wasn't the same, and they knew that it wasn't going to be the same in many ways. The original was the original, and one of the key elements of the original was actually the presence of God, what they called the Shekinah. And though they may not have known that would not be in this second temple, they also knew that they didn't have the money that Solomon did to put this together in such a way.

But the work began. Now, as so often happens with human nature and human beings in any endeavor, work begins with great earnest. We go out every year in the spring, we plow up our little plots of land, we put seeds in there, and we have a great deal of enthusiasm for those gardens in April and May.

But by September, who cares? Who cares? Unless it's John McClain, and he cares to go all the way to the end. Fatigue sets in, time sets in, problems, human nature. But in the case of this group, there was some opposition that came in that was rather interesting. In chapter 4, verse 1, we're told that there were adversaries of Judah and Benjamin who had heard that the descendants of the captivity were building the temple of the Lord God of Israel.

Adversaries. Who would oppose this? Let's read on. They came as a rubble bell in the heads of the father's houses, and they said to them, Let us build with you. For we seek your God as you do. Interesting statement. We seek your God, not our God. We seek your God as you do. And we've sacrificed to him since the days of Esirhad and king of Assyria who brought us here. This group of people here called adversaries recognized that this was a part of the grouping of people who had been transplanted into the northern realms of Israel after the Assyrian conquest and became known in time as the Samaritans.

Now, they had an interesting approach to religion. The record tells us that they brought in their gods and goddesses from Assyria and the other distant realms that they were gathered up and transplanted there to be a presence in the land, a vassal state for the then Assyrian Empire. But they remained. They didn't give Babylon any trouble. They were allowed to remain. And now here they are during the Persian period having control of that area.

And they've endured. They've stuck and they begin to consider the story of Israel almost as their story. They have joined themselves to an idea. That's why they say, we know your God. We kind of worship Him too. Now, this is the same group of people called the Samaritans that will stick in the area. And actually we find them in the New Testament playing a very interesting role in the New Testament story. It is to Samaria that Jesus went. He talked to a woman at a well in the city of Samaria.

Samaria was where another leading figure in the book of Acts named Philip goes down and preaches and has people baptized. And he also baptized a guy named Simon Magus, who was a wizard, sorcerer, and has an encounter with Peter. Christ even tells a whole parable after a person called the Good Samaritan.

They have an interesting story in their relationship to Israel and to the Jews here. At this point in time, they say, hey, we'd like to help you. We identify with your God, and we want to help you in this. But they get an interesting answer from Zerubbabel in verse 3. Zerubbabel and Joshua, the high priest and essentially the kind of the political leader, and the rest of the heads of the houses of Israel say to them this, you may do nothing with us to build a house for our God. Notice again the different pronoun that is used here. Our God. We alone will build to the Lord God of Israel as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us.

They didn't join in. They didn't allow them. How rude. Free labor. Turn it down. Why did they turn it down? Because, as they said, this is our commission. This is our mission. We are—they recognize that there was a difference between the two groups.

Now, that really doesn't speak well to a modern ear today, because we're into diversity and inclusion and all of this. So we all know that. So to exclude a group and to discriminate in this way, because you're not like us, wouldn't go too far today.

But what was being said? The phrase here says that you may do nothing with us. We alone will build. It's really an idiom. It's a phrase that really has a deeper meaning here. What essentially, as the rub-a-bell is saying, is we have no part with you. We have no part with you.

Now, again, to a modern ear, that's really rough. But it's important to understand the statement from God's purpose and plan, therefore from God's perspective. Because, by Joshua and Zerubbabel saying, look, we have no part with you. At one level, it was not meant to, in a sense, put them down or to put these Samaritans in an unsafe place and hurt their feelings. It was to them a statement of fact because Israel, the Jews, and the people of Benjamin were a part of a unique people in a unique relationship with God. And they'd never forgotten that. And they understood that. They knew that that's why their ancestors had been deported, why they had been in Babylon. And they knew that that's why they were even coming back here by the decree of Cyrus because all of that was by the hand of God. This was not lost upon Joshua and Zerubbabel. And they could not be unfaithful to that reality, that truth, by saying, oh, well, that's right. We're all one people. Rainbow Coalition. Let's all work together. Our God is your God. Mytheos Sutheos. To blend a little Greek and Spanish there, I guess. We're all one. It doesn't matter, but it did matter. It did matter. And that's the point. We have no part with you. Our part is as a part of a covenant that our fathers broke. And that's why we're here, to somehow rebuild that and to establish a presence of the people in this land. And they understood that. It's a powerful thing for any grouping of people, whatever ethnicity, nationality, religion, to understand who they are and never lose sight of that. The whole story of nations and peoples are people that are cast here and there, displaced. They immigrate. They migrate. They lose sight of who they ever were. And therefore, they don't know who they are. And it comes down to us to this day, but these people knew who they were. Well, the Samaritans didn't take no for an answer. And in verse 4, it says, It says, And it says in verse 4, What they did was they weakened the hand. Again, this is another idiom. That means that they caused them to slack off from the job that they were doing. They got discouraged, and their morale was weakened because these Samaritans and other peoples mixed in with them continued to create legal blockades against their continuing in the work. Now, the remainder of Ezra in the subsequent chapters – we don't have the time to go through that – goes through that story in more detail. I'll come back to that in my Bible study on Wednesday night when we get into the book of Haggai. It was quite extensive, and there were quite a bit of lessons there. But they continued on. In fact, what happened was essentially the work on rebuilding the temple came to an end.

The site lay desolate for up to about 18 years while the Jews went about their own lives. Building their homes, planting crops, trying to eke out a living. They were stymied by actual decrees and a legal battle that began to entail with the Persian court. Ezra tells that story.

But the people who had a mandate from Cyrus to do it and should have been able to continue straight on with it allowed the words and the actions of these people to cut it down and to stop it. And as a result of that, the work on rebuilding the temple came to a close.

Now, this is an old story, as I said. It's ancient, ancient, ancient. Very old. It's what we call dry history. And as I tell the students at ABC when we talk a lot about Bible history in my class, and I tell them, the reason most people don't like history is because they probably had a bad history teacher. Who himself didn't like history, but they kind of just stumbled into it. I had a few of those in my years. And fortunately, I had one history teacher finally when I was a freshman in college that turned the light on for me. The light that was already there, but he really turned it on in even greater lumens for me.

This story is not old. This story is not ancient. In fact, this story is very modern. And it has great application for the Church of God today. This story that we're reading about of a group of people who have a zeal to get about a mission given to them by God and then let down in it, this is our story. This is our story. And it has great lessons today.

As you know, we are not in the process of building or rebuilding a physical structure called a temple like they were. We have a different approach. We have a different, deeper, greater understanding about what God is doing. In fact, we know that today God is building a spiritual temple today. We know that because we read in 1 Corinthians. You can picture ribbon or whatever there in Ezra and we'll come back to it.

But turn over to 1 Corinthians 3.

1 Corinthians 3.

And as we look at verse 16, the Apostle Paul makes the statement directly that tells us exactly how this applies to us and what we're all about.

He says in verse 16, Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

You are the temple of God. He's writing to the church, a church in Corinth, but by extension to you and I today.

And he's explaining this very profound spiritual truth that we, you, we collectively are the temple of God.

And the Spirit of God dwells in us, the very presence of God.

God's life is within us through His Holy Spirit.

Now this is Paul's conclusion here in verses 16 and 17 of 1 Corinthians chapter 3.

After several other verses and statements that lead him to this conclusion, and for you and I to understand the full impact of what he says here, we ought to go back just a few verses and pick up the thread of what he talks about. So turn back to chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians.

And let's look at verse 10.

Where he begins to address a problem that was within the church at Corinth, and see if we can identify with this. 1 Corinthians chapter 10. This is where the thread leads to what we just read. Paul writes, I plead with you brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you speak the same thing, you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. No divisions. They had divisions in the church at Corinth. For it's been declared for me, he says in verse 11, that concerning you, my brethren, by those of Cloy's household, that there are contentions among you. And I say this so that each of you says, I am of Paul, or I am of Apollos, or I am of Cethis, which was Peter. And then others said, well, we're not of any human being. We follow Christ. So you see the differing divisions based on personalities.

And frankly, then, based on what was probably self-righteousness, well, we're not following any man. We're just following Christ. And we have a unique hotline to Jesus Christ. They may have thought there. And then he asks the great question in verse 13. Is Christ divided?

Is Christ divided?

And he doesn't answer it. You know why? Because he already knows the answer.

It's an obvious answer there. We call that a rhetorical question.

He knows the answer. The answer is no.

The answer is no. Christ is not divided.

Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?

And he goes on to talk about the problems of the divisions that were within the church. But he says, Christ is not divided. Frankly, one of the scariest rhetorical questions that you and I could read today, from our perspective, in the Church of God.

I read that sometimes, and I shudder.

I shudder.

Because that's the reality. The reality is, no, he's not divided.

Now, in chapter 3 and verse 5, Paul picks up this theme again. He says, Who is Paul? Who's Apollos? Ministers, through whom you believe, as the Lord gave to each one.

Any minister of God is only a minister of God to the degree that the Lord is working through them.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.

It's all the work of God. He who plants and he who waters are one.

And each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

For we, he says, collectively, are God's fellow workers.

The ministry, in this context, is who he's referencing. We're all fellow workers. You are God's field. You are God's building.

This is the lead-up to what we just read about the fact that the church is the temple of God.

According to the grace of God, verse 10, which is given to me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation and another builds on it, but let each one take heed how he builds on it.

Remember the story back in Ezra where the Jews lay the foundation, they rejoiced, and then they stopped working on that structure to be put on top of that foundation.

For no other foundation, back in verse 11, can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now if anyone builds on this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each one's work will become clear, for the day will declare it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each one's work of what sort it is.

If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward.

If anyone's work is burned, he'll suffer a loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so is through fire.

And then again, do you not know, brethren, that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?

If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy which temple you are.

The collective body of people in whom dwells the Spirit of God comprise the people who are this group, this building being put together by what is described here.

Very straightforward, very easy to understand.

And yet, there is an interesting matter for all of us, because as we read earlier, is Christ divided? Is Christ divided?

Paul later tells us that God's eternal purpose is to bring all things together, all things, through Christ.

Ephesians chapter 1 kind of is a coda, a capstone to this.

The entire chapter that begins, that traces what the Father is doing through Christ.

But chapter 1 tells us in verse 10 that in the fullness of the times, He might gather together and want all things in Christ which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him.

This statement lifted out of the context of a rather long passage here that is talking about God's purpose to bring together a people, predestined from before the foundation of the age and of the world, a people who are the people of God, this very temple of God, the spiritual body, have been all a part of God's eternal purpose and plan from before the foundation of the world.

And he says and makes the point here in verse 10 that God, His ultimate purpose is to bring all things together in Christ, both which are in heaven and are on earth in Him.

Now he goes on to show that Christ is the head of the church and that He is the head of over all things and that it is His body here at the end of chapter 1 as well.

All part of the profound story of what God is doing spiritually to build this temple, this people that are holy to Him, that are essentially the body of Christ, and by that the Father is going to bring and reconcile together all things in Him through Christ.

When you understand the end result, then you understand why the story back in Ezra is so important to us because these people were only a prelude to what we are doing today and what we have been a part of and what God is ultimately doing and will continue to do until the moment when He brings it all together in Christ at His particular point in time, this great cosmic spiritual body that is not divided.

The story in Ezra of these Jews is a prelude of what God has been doing and is doing today and what has always been His purpose. That's why their story is our story and why all of that is so important today.

So that when we go back to Ezra and we read, then, what caused these people to get distracted for a period of time, there is a lesson there for us.

They got discouraged by the words and the actions of these people who wanted to be a part of them but were not really a part of them. They had no part in that.

Who professed and yet, when they were rebuffed, created discouragement.

But the ultimate problem lay with the Jews who allowed that to happen.

They had a mission. They had a sincere, simple, single-minded focus to rebuild the temple.

And that mission was given to them of God.

We have a very clear, direct, single mission in the church today. The same church, the same body of people, to proclaim the glory of God, to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God, to care for those disciples that are added, and to continue that job.

And we also have the same challenges and the same problems that they faced and had to deal with today, in their day.

They had the cares of the world to deal with, right there in their face, in the form of people who wanted to work with them, but then raised problems and distractions.

It's words, it's ideas, it's discouraging examples that still can impact us today and cause us to let down in our zeal and to leave off from our part in building to and adding to the body of Jesus Christ and helping to build this temple, which we are all a part, to where our hands would grow weary and we could get discouraged.

That happens to us today.

The cares of this world. Pride. Sin. Discouragement. People will cause that to happen to us. We will let it happen to ourselves.

People can divide us. Ministers can divide us. Like Paul said, some say I'm of Apollos or Peter.

Self-righteousness can divide. So many different things cause us to be divided and to lose that single-minded focus.

Which again is why the story from Haggai and Ezra is so important.

What God did with these people is He sent them a man, a prophet, by the name of Haggai.

The story of Haggai is told in only two chapters.

In that prophet, you will find He basically says to them two things when He comes in their midst.

In Haggai 1, verse 5, He tells the people, and this is 18 years after they have stopped building the temple and been discouraged by the Samaritans and their legal blockades, and then their own weakness to be discouraged by it, and to then build their own houses, plant their own fields, and get on with their own lives, and neglect the building of the temple.

God says to them in Haggai 1, verse 5, Consider your ways. Consider your ways.

And He mentions it several times, and He comes back to that.

And essentially, He's another way of saying, examine yourself. Look at what you're doing. Look at what has caused all of this to happen.

Consider your ways.

And then He says one other very encouraging thing to them in verse 13 of Haggai 1.

He tells them, get back to the work. I'm with you. I am with you.

I am with you. I delivers it through Haggai.

Now, Haggai is a very different type of prophet.

Many of the prophets were sent to the people mired in their sins before the captivity for many of them, many of the prophets.

But Haggai is sent just to the people to stir them up, to get back to their job of rebuilding the temple.

And He says two things. Consider your ways.

And God says, I'm with you.

Which taken together can be one of the most encouraging one-two punches for the people of God at any time, and especially for us today.

To consider our ways, which is why I wanted to give this as a prelude to the other Bible study going into the book of Haggai, because it helps as a background even to understand the story of Haggai as to what was taking place. And again, to put Haggai's message in a modern context for us all, which is always important, so that we gain the most meaning as to how it applies to us.

Consider your ways. All of us should be doing that in relation to this singular job of working upon the temple of God, the spiritual temple of God, the Church of God.

That we have a part in doing.

The temple of God, the spiritual body of Christ, is a spiritual entity that we really do need to look at more closely and seek to understand exactly what that is.

We get hung up on our organizations and personalities, just like we read.

And we forget what God is really doing and why it is so important for us to work together and to be together and to promote a unity and a brotherhood and a harmony among ourselves. To consider our ways. And we have a lot to consider.

We have a lot to continue to grow in and to develop in this way to be instruments in God's hands.

And to again claim that promise that God is with us and return to the work and to recognize what we are doing.

All of us have thought a lot, I'm sure, in various ways about the events of recent days with the American election coming to a conclusion and the election of a new president.

A surprise for so many.

And an unusual and bitter and long campaign season. And a lot of questions and a lot of uncertainty on some part, a lot of fear on others, hope.

We'll all have to wait and see how it all comes out.

I make no predictions.

I learned after listening to all the experts for the last 18 months, stop making predictions.

I'm in the... I'll tell you something. I am looking for a new group of experts when it comes to politics and our society.

If you've got any candidates, I'm willing to consider some of them because the ones that I've had, they're all crossed off my list.

None of them got it right. These are my virtual mentors that I've collected through the years.

Go to people who seem to know what it's going, and I came to realize they don't know. They don't know nothing.

They don't. And so I'm looking for a new list.

But I'm convicted of this one point, that America and other nations in the world right now, I think, have a reprieve.

We have a moment of reprieve in God's plan and purpose and ultimately in God's judgment upon the nations. I think there is a moment. And I think that because of that, there is more work to be done.

There is more work to be done in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.

God, I think, has more people to call to His ultimate purpose of glory and salvation.

And I think that that is before us all.

And I also think that there is more work to be done in building the spiritual temple of God, of which we are all a part.

And that is going to take a more introspective, in some ways even harder effort than the first to do, but must be done.

I think that the time has come to build the spiritual temple of God and for us to look at that and to see where we fall in that and where we fit.

And to look at the message of Haggai, to consider our ways, all of us, no matter where we find ourselves.

I think that this is the time for us all to focus upon the building of the spiritual temple of God.

Because, as Haggai said, God is with us.

And we have a singular mission and a singular purpose that is exactly as refined as that which Joshua and Zerubbabel had.

Where they said to the Samaritans, look, you have your role, we have ours.

And we must be about that.

And we must renew a zeal for that, for building the body of Jesus Christ and our part within it, and ultimately seeing that that is accomplished.

There's a very instructive story from the building of that first temple during the age of Solomon.

The story that is told to us in 1 Kings 6 is that when Solomon was building that temple, that on the site where it was to be erected, there was not a hammer, a chisel, or an iron tool.

As they quarried the stone, as they shaped it, put it together, and I take that even to the cutting of the various timbers, and the framing, and the work that was part of the interior, that all of that must have been done off-site in various locations.

And if no iron tool was heard on that temple site, that it all came together and it was assembled in some unique fashion as a building project, unique in all time.

As great a mystery as the building of the pyramids in Egypt.

Which tells us that the pieces, large and small, were cut, fabricated to spec off-site, and then brought and assembled there.

I take the spiritual lesson from that as to what God has always been doing, as He has been always, really, putting together a spiritual body, a spiritual temple.

And that is that He has been cutting it, the pieces, shaping and molding the individuals, the people, from the time that He began to build this spiritual body in various parts of the world, among various nations at various times through the ages.

He has shaped people through events, through conversion, through the giving of His Spirit, through the trials and the experiences of their lives, the perfecting of the saints.

And all these ages, and all these locations, and all these places, and their deaths were not unknown or unnoticed by Him as they came to a time of fruition and preparation for His spiritual body.

And then in His time and in His place that only the Father knows, it will all be assembled.

And that work continues today in the shaping, building of the individual component parts of the spiritual body.

And we have a part to play in that. And we need to recognize what that is, and it is unique, and it is a unique calling.

As Paul also said, brethren, see your calling. Understand your calling. It is being done. It is being done by God and by Jesus Christ today.

And to the degree we yield ourselves into their capable hands for it to be built, it is being done, and we will be a part of that.

It is a profound message and lesson for us all to understand and to appreciate as to what is being done with the Church, the body of Jesus Christ, the spiritual temple to which He will come today in God's great plan and great design.

Because it is being assembled today.

The question then, this is my rhetorical question to us, are we being prepared? Are we a part of that process today?

So where does God dwell? If the Most High does not dwell in a temple made with hands, where does He dwell? Well, the answer is, the Most High dwells in a spiritual temple being shaped and formed by His hands to His end and to His purpose today.