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It is a familiar analogy of scripture to compare the building of God's kingdom and church to the raising of a structure or building or temple. I am nowhere near the first to use such analogies in past sermons. In fact, the original Apostles -- while maybe not actual building contractors themselves -- sprung upon the comparison and first wrote of such things. Paul wrote the church in Ephesus:

He is comparing the church of the Almighty God to the building of a tabernacle or temple and he likens the foundation to being the teachings of the apostles and prophets, the Old and New Testament teachings of scripture. He also says that Jesus Christ must be the cornerstone, the first laid block that is carefully set to keep everything else square, tight, and in line. There is a worthy sermon in this passage of scripture alone: that to be a true dwelling place of God and the true church, we should make sure that we are founded upon the teaching of the scripture and in particular the doctrine of the early Apostolic church. And that we'd better never forget that unless Jesus Christ is the center and focus of our efforts to work for God here on earth, we will eventually go astray. We must strive to place Him in the crucial place of honor and to build everything off of Him!

In our building analogy, we find that after the foundation and cornerstone is laid, that the stones of the structure are you and I the common, Spirit-filled believers. Peter wrote:

It is important that we let God shape us and mold us and knock the rough edges off of us because He is taking us and setting us in the building of His church and only He knows exactly where we fit and what form that we need to be in to keep His work going! We are living stones, building up a spiritual house!

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And so you can see that we could -- and people have -- preached whole messages about building structures and how it is a great object lesson of how God's church in these last days is built. Such things have been preached by me and no doubt will be preached again, but I would like in this sermon to take a different tack. And, realizing from the New Testament that we are being built together as a spiritual building as the church of God, go to a "non-standard" story in the Old Testament to discover what lessons it teaches us about this building project we call our lives and Medina Valley Christian Worship. Turn with me again, if you are not still there, to 2 Kings 6:1.

The story of our text is a building story from the time of the great prophet Elisha. We find that Elisha established schools for prophets -- sort of ancient bible colleges -- and under his tutelage, the profession grew and expanded. In 2 Kings chapter 6, we find that the day came where the need for a bigger building and dwelling place was crucial and so they began to build a bigger place on the banks of the Jordan river. For seven short verses, we get a glimpse of the story that obviously God thought important enough to record for us to be able to read today. In short, it is the story of a building, an axe, and the master and I want you to realize the similarities between this story and our lives today. Notice, first:

Growth always leads to cramped ness and a place feeling too narrow for you. That is true in the physical -- if a family grows, the house begins to feel smaller and smaller and as a church grows, the facilities that they are in begins to feel more and more confined. Growth brings its own problems and that is why some churches are content not to grow, because to try to maintain "their four and no more" is much easier, less tasking, and not nearly as expensive as it is to try to move forward into bigger and better!

What is true in the natural is also true in the spiritual. If we continue growing in Christ as we should, then we will quickly find ourselves in a place where yesterday's anointing seems much too small and yesterday's commitment seems insignificant. When you first step into Apostolic truth or a fresh anointing or a new level in God, it seems that you have a long way to go before you fill the spiritual shoes that have just been given you! But after a while, as you walk in that new anointing and after you have been there a while -- if you grow in Christ as you should -- then you grow cramped in the spiritual place that you are. What once satisfied your spiritual hunger and left you pumped up now leaves you longing for more and deeper things! When you are serving God and you used to be satisfied with a service where the preacher preached to you and you shouted a little bit, but now you often get to that place of joy and revelation and yet still feel empty and a little wanting -- such feelings are good things because they indicate to you that you have grown and that your present spiritual dwelling is getting too small for you!

The scriptures say that when the boy Samuel was lent to the temple of the Lord to be trained by the High Priest, that his mother visited every year, bringing her little boy a new coat to replace the one from last year. This was a necessity because Samuel was growing and so as the year would wear on, the old coat would seem smaller and smaller, but when the new coat came, it would seem large and spacious and yet it would only be within a year's time that what months before had seemed so large and spacious was again feeling cramped and confining.

I would hope that we would be the same way -- that we would not be at the same spiritual level that we were last year this time or even last month! That we would not be battling the same issues or at the same level of faithfulness or unfaithfulness that we were half a year a go. God forbid that we should be so comfortable in living for Him that we would not press toward a greater commitment and a greater anointing, because that would mean that we are not growing! I want my growth level to be so constant that every few months I need a new covering of anointing! I have felt like that the last few weeks that my current level of God and living for Him seems a bit tight and it is time to move on up to a deeper and greater level! Sure it requires effort and sacrifice and getting out of our comfort zone, but let's make sure that we keep growing forward in God! If I stop growing then I begin to die!

Moving along in our text, notice that:

The first place, the man of God had led them into and provided for them, but notice what they did not do now that they have grown a bit. They did not go to Elisha and demand that he build them a better place. They did not go to Elisha with the attitude that he petition God to POOF! create a greater building. If you read the chapters surrounding this story, you will find that Elisha and his fellow prophets had been of great service to the king in protecting from and revealing to him the plans of the enemy. But there is no attitude of the people here expecting the king to come and build it for them -- they are not waiting on outside help. But rather they took the initiative to come up with a way to build a bigger place themselves! They still got the man of God's permission and approval, but they were willing to admit that it was their responsibility to build the new and bigger place. Verse 2 has such phrases as "let us go to the Jordon" and "let us make a place."

You need to realize that the man of God can only usher you into so much anointing on his own. He can bring you to a place where you become an initiate in God's people. He can teach you the foundational principles and pray you through to the Holy Ghost, and you need a pastor -- don't get me wrong. But at the same time, some people have the attitude that they are waiting on the man of God to usher them into being everything that they should be. They are waiting for the man of God to fast and pray for his ministry and theirs also. They are waiting for him to study enough and learn the Word of God so much that they can just come and be ushered right in with minimal effort into a greater anointing and into the fulfillment of the will of God in their life. But understand that somewhere you have got to come to the realization that it is your responsibility to act upon what you know to do. If the body of Christ is to mature and grow, then you are going to have to put some sacrifice and effort into this building process yourself!

Some people don't want a pastor, but rather a king. Let me remind you of a scripture:

They wanted a king so that they could send him out to fight their battles for them! Samuel had been a pastor to them but he directed them in the ways of the Lord and yet they had to take the initiative to go out and fight the battle themselves. And they had grown tired of that because that meant that they had to learn to trust God for themselves and step out in faith for themselves and put some effort out for themselves. Therefore they rejected the plan of God and desired a king!

I have always won souls in my life and I will continue to do so, but it is not my job to win Castroville and Medina County to Christ and Apostolic truth; rather it is our job to win Medina County to Christ! It is not my job to pray for Apostolic revival but it is our job to pray in that manner! It is not my job to make sure that we have good church, sensitive to the moving of the Spirit and with true worship, but it is our job to do such! It is time that we took the initiative to grow and build and expand in God!

They came to Elisha and asked permission and I'm not preaching about being a rebel and doing things in an un-Godly or confused manner. But I am preaching about everybody waiting for the pastor to get revival started and the pastor to get everybody fired up and for the pastor to organize an outreach and for the pastor to ask me to teach somebody a Bible Study and for the pastor to call us to prayer and fasting. Too often when somebody comes to me and says, "Pastor, we need to do this in our church" what they really mean is that "somebody other than me needs to do this." That's what I'm talking about!

Does anybody feel confined at our current spiritual level? Is anybody chaffing and squirming in our current revival state like a kid with a too-tight collar? Has anybody sighed lately and said to yourself, "we need to go beyond where we are, this dwelling place in the spirit is getting a bit narrow?" If you are, then why don't you catch fire and spur us into the next level!? Why don't you say "let us go to the Jordan" and "let us make a place!" Why don't you grow and fast and pray and step out in faith into the new, needed dimension!? Stop waiting for everybody else to do it and stop waiting for the man of God to do it for you! Take the spiritual initiative to move on spiritually yourself!

Getting back to our text, I want you to notice that:

Building a church is not a hard thing requiring extensive blueprints and detailed drawings with copious notes. To be successful as God wants for us to be, we need no greater plan than that of our text. Each one of them did the exact same: old, young, male, female, middle-aged and whatever. Here's the secret as to why this worked: each carried as large a load as they possibly could. They all went to the river and each cut down a tree and carried it to the top of the hill for the building project. Some carried a heavier load than others and others carried much lighter loads, but each did all that each was capable of -- no more and no less. A building requires all shapes and sizes of wood and so when each brought what they could, there was enough for what was needed. The theme was don't overdo it: cut down for yourself only what you can carry, but cut down all that you can carry. Don't overdo it, but everybody do your full part!

What seems like a daunting task is readily possible and doable when everyone does what they can. That is how the finances of a church work. If those whose salary is miniscule compared to what others make have the attitude that "my contribution does not compare to what so and so gives" and they then hold it back, then the giving of the larger givers will not be enough by itself to take care of the church's bills. God does not ask your offering to match someone of greater means but He does ask that you do what you can and do all you can!

Moving beyond money, the principle holds true! Some people can commit more time and effort into the church weekly than others. It will always be that way. But that does not mean that the person who is able to volunteer for an hour is worth less than the person who donates twenty. Both are important and we will only be able to reach what God intends for us to do if everybody does all that they can regardless how it compares with each other!

We are not waiting for supernatural means to come in the suitcase of a traveling evangelist afar. We are not waiting for someone to suddenly prophesy into this great soul winner and move to Castroville. We are not waiting for someone to be walking down the road and find a lottery ticket and give 60 zillion dollars to the church. If God wanted to do that, do you really think that He would give the lottery credit? We are not waiting on such things so that we can effectively reach Medina County with Apostolic revival. What we are waiting on is for everybody to get the revelation that I must do my part! I will not cut off more than I can bear, but I will cut off as much as I can bear! The goal of reaching Medina County is doable with the people under the sound of my voice, IF we will all do all that we can! It may be that as in many churches, 20% of the people do 80% of the work and that's fine, but understand that 20% or even 80% cannot do all of the work themselves! You each need the other part! Those of you who are involved up to your gills, stop criticizing those whose situation causes them to not be able to contribute as much, but those of you who are in that situation stop using those that are heavily involved as an excuse to keep from pitching in and doing what you can! God's plan of growth is simple: do all that you can; no more and no less!

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Getting back to our text, we find:

The Bible says:

We know from other scriptures that Israel somewhere -- probably Egypt -- had learned to use iron for their axe heads and that for the axe head to sling off during use was a fairly common occurrence. In fact, it was so common that the laws of Moses gave guidelines as to what to do if a flying axe head were to accidentally kill someone (Deuteronomy 19:5). {For those of you who have to know, the scripture said that in such cases the person swinging the axe could flee to a city of refuge and not die, but that is another sermon for another time.}

But this problem in our text was unique in that as one of the men worked, the axe head slung off and went into the raging and muddy waters of the Jordan river where it sank and was lost. To make matters worse the axe head was borrowed, and if you had to borrow an axe head in those days, it meant that you did not have the means to make or buy an axe head for yourself and so now he was in a predicament where he had lost something that was impossible to replace and without which he could not work and the building would not be finished.

Building the church that God wants here is a lasting task. It will not be done in one Sunday's services, but through years and much effort. The axe head symbolized that man's power to do what was needed for the building to go forth. It symbolizes in our lives, the power and anointing and unction of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God! Without the Spirit of God flowing through us and aiding our efforts, all effort that we put forth is in vain! Without a Word of God guiding our lives, we have no means to cut down and procure what we need to do! And understand that like that axe head, the Holy Ghost and the Word of God is borrowed and does not belong to us, but rather it is God's who gave it to us! If we lose it we will have to give an account as to what happened to it!

Give the guy credit, at least he was perceptive enough to know that the power had slipped from his grasp. He didn't stay there pretending like everything was okay beating the tree with the handle! That's more than some Christians do. Some Christians lose their zeal or their honed, spiritual edge or their commitment and yet go through the motions of living for God as if everything is fine and get mad if the preacher points out that they lost something! We ought to be perceptive enough to know when we are beating a log with a dull stick in the spirit! We ought to be sensitive enough to realize when our worship and our faithfulness has lost its edge and its power! We ought not to have to have the preacher or anyone else point out when our commitment is slipping and disappearing beneath the muddy waters of the river of life!

Notice that even the best axe swinger and most talented tree feller is powerless with a lost axe head! So it is with Christians: it matters not your talent level or your experience level or your natural abilities that lie within you if you have lost the Holy Ghost anointing and zeal and passion on the end of your effort! We cannot do this on our own power and our own talents, but we need the Spirit of God to help us do what we must do! We need the sharp-edge of the Word of God to pierce and divide asunder! As we read in our other text:

All of our own effort without His help, will be as useless and as frustrating as banging a handle against a tree trunk! Our effort and sacrifice is required but never forget that it the Lord's working with us and through us that builds the house!

And let me throw this in here for free: it is important to finish what you start building in God. Jesus said:

The real danger of the setback of the axe head was that it would keep them from being able to finish what they had started! There are people at your work and at your school and in your family that they are waiting patiently to see if this joy and this commitment and this new found way of abundant life in Jesus Christ will last! They know that you have started building something in your life and family that they also need to work on, but they are waiting to see if you are going to see this thing through! They are waiting to see if you are going to allow a few setbacks and some unexpected misfortunes and trials to keep you from continuing on in what you have set out to do! They've heard your testimony and they have seen the changes and they see what you are shooting for, but now they are sitting back and giving it time to see if it will be something that is finished or something that was only temporary! Somebody make up in your mind that no matter what comes my way, I am going to finish this race! It's not time to compromise your convictions or to give in to peer pressure of this world, but rather it is time to keep moving forward and to finish what we started in God!

Getting back to our issue with the axe head, we find that the man knew what to do!

He called Elisha "master!" But our master is Jesus Christ! If you have lost your spiritual edge and lost your zeal and lost the power of the Holy Ghost in your life, then admit that you have lost it and cry out to the Master for help! And then we find that if you want it back, you must,

Elisha said "where did you lose it?" and they returned there to that place! If you are here and you feel as if you have lost something in God that you once had, my question to you is the same as the Lord's "where did you lose it?" If you want it back, you've got to go back to the place where it was that you mislaid it!

Is that not what God told the church of Ephesus in the book of Revelation? He commanded them to "go back and do the first works!" (Revelation 2:4-5) They had lost their first love and to get it back they had to go back to what they were doing when they had it! Have you lost your burden, then go back to where you where before you lost it! If you have lost your prayer life, then get back to where you were before it disappeared! If you have lost a love for the Word of God or for living for God or your joy, then go back to where you lost it and take the Master with you! And then here's the next step:

Elisha does a strange thing. The Bible says that he cut off a stick from a nearby tree and threw it into the water where the axe head had disappeared. But when the wood hit the place, something miraculous and supernatural took place; the axe head of iron floated to the surface of the river! What a strange manner to perform such a great feat! I would have half expected Elisha to snap his fingers or pray a prayer or something, but instead he through the wood into the water to bring on the miracle of restoration.

Reminds me of the only wood in our spiritual lives that has such power, the cross of Calvary! When you've lost something in God, it is beneficial to go back to that wood and get it into your situation and dilemma again! The cross still has power to save and it is not just for sinners! Don't come to God demanding this and that and snapping your fingers and such, but rather come and bow a knee of surrender again to His will and die out to your flesh again -- get the wood of the cross back into your situation and you will find that what you lost is miraculously restored!

When the iron axe head floated, the master then had a further command:

Most modern translations read that the "iron floated" but the KJV says that it "swam." It is possible that the KJV's rendering is preferred here because the Hebrew word here means "to flow over." God did everything that He could to help the man in this restorative process. The iron floated and came over to the guy, but it was still the man's responsibility to pick it back up and to fasten it back on the handle and to get back to doing what he was supposed to be doing!

God still restores lost things today! When you cry out to Him for help, and return to the first works, and get the wood of Calvary involved again, God still performs the miraculous in bad situations, but it is still up to us to take back and use what we had lost. Too many times, when people fall and lose something in their walk with God they are timid when it is restored or they are too ashamed to take it back up and use it again! But understand that God has restored it and now your responsibility is to go back to work as if nothing had ever happened! So you lost it temporarily, He had given it back to you! So you fell, get back up! God can do everything for you except to make you try again -- that is your part!

So your endeavor to be apart of God's church hasn't gone quite like you planned. So unexpected and unfortunate circumstances have come about. Such is anything in this life, but whatever you do, don't let it distract you from finishing what you set out to do! Maybe you lost the joy for a while, let God restore it to you and put it back into its proper place in your life! So you lost the edge of the Spirit and your passion for a moment, let God restore it and get back to swinging! So you lost your spiritual head and took a unforeseen setback, it is time to get back up and get back to work for God and keep on keeping on! There's no time for sullenness or depression or the "mully grubs" by the River Jordan, we are growing in God and there is work for me to do!

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And so I close with this:

Some of you who were following along our text in your Bibles thought that I skipped the third verse accidentally, but I just saved it for last. I wanted you to be more familiar with the story before I pointed out how much of a key this verse was. It says that after they got permission from Elisha to go out and do the project,

The last one out the door turned to him and said to the master, "will you go with us?" And so here is the secret to their success of this project and it is just as important for us:

They didn't take for granted that he would tag along, but that they invited him. They didn't want to undertake anything without the master in the middle of it. And now that you know the story and the situation that arose, think back and ask yourself, "what if he had not been there?"

No matter the circumstance or the situation let us not forget to invite Jesus Christ with us! We not only need His blessing and permission but we need His help! I read our other text again:

I do not take it for granted that God will just show up here when we meet for services, but I am sure to ask for His presence! I do not want to take His being here for granted! Maybe you get tired of hearing me say this, but I will yet again: without His help and His presence and His power, there is no point in us even trying! But if He is here with us, then it matters not what the trial or the problem or the issue that may arise, we will get through it because He will perform what we need!

We are building a place for God to work in Medina County. Let us never forget the lessons learned of this story our text. Come and ask the help of Jesus Christ in applying to our lives the lessons learned from the story of a building, an axe, and the Master!