Lessons From A Building Project

1 Kings 8:63-64 And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered unto the LORD, two and twenty thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of the LORD. 64 The same day did the king hallow the middle of the court that was before the house of the LORD: for there he offered burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings: because the brasen altar that was before the LORD was too little to receive the burnt offerings, and meat offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings.

1 Cor 6:19-20 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

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You will not go too far in Bible Study until you come across the wonderful theme in scripture of our bodies being the temple of the Holy Ghost. We who are privileged to live after Calvary do not have to settle for just walking with Jesus around Galilee but today we can have His very Spirit living within us! Jesus told His disciples "I have been with you, but I shall be in you" (John 14:17), implying that the greatest way to have Jesus was not in bodily form next to you, but to have His Spirit within you with your body as the temple of the Lord. That way, Jesus would be with you always!

It is a principle in God's Word that God always blesses greater and better. That is, Grace is so much better than Law, but even Law was better than what Abraham knew. As long as you are living for God, you will always have a great future in God because the future is always better and greater! I've heard Christians say "I wish that I could have walked around Galilee with Jesus and been back there during His earthly ministry." I've wished the same thing myself, just to be able to be an eye witness of the things recorded in scripture would have been neat! But I've also heard modern Christians say things like "it would be so much better if I had been alive during Jesus' earthly ministry." Nothing could be further than the truth! Such an attitude reveals to me that the person does not have a true revelation of what it means to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Because the "Spirit-filled person" is -- according to Jesus -- a step ahead of those who witnessed His earthly ministry. Instead of having Jesus around for a few hours each day, every one of us can have Jesus with us in every situation, every day. Understand that to be filled with the Holy Ghost is a better and greater experience than the disciples who walked around with Jesus during His earthly ministry had! And it's an even greater improvement over what Moses had, because instead of having God dwell in a physical temple building in the middle of camp, or in the middle of the country, the scriptures teach that when the Spirit of God lives within us, our bodies become the temple of the Holy Ghost! Our physical bodies and lives become the place where God chooses to manifest and reveal Himself in this earth. Even the most experienced Christians need to be reminded that it is an awesome privilege to have the King of Kings, the Lord of Glory live within your body! It is a tremendous and powerful experience to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, because your body is literally becoming the temple of God upon this earth!

If what Paul says in our text about our bodies being the temple of the Holy Ghost is true, then our bodies are the only temple in scripture that God has ever moved into that was unfinished! When Moses' tabernacle was built, it was only after everything was completed that the Shekina presence descended into the Holiest of Holies, that inner room where God would dwell. When Solomon built his temple, it was after everything had been finished and all of the work had stopped that they dedicated the temple to the Lord, and then during the dedication prayers and ministering, the visible presence of the Lord descended as a cloud so thick that the priests had to stop playing their instruments and sacrificing. Years later, after that temple was torn down, Zerrubabel built a smaller temple that would be later expanded by Herod and would be the temple of Jesus' time in the New Testament.

Zerrubabel's temple was lacking certain things that the other temples had according to the Jewish scribes. Zerrbabel's temple lacked: 1. The Urim and Thummim, which was the part of the Ephod or priest's garment from which the high priest could ask things directly of the Lord. 2. The Shekina presence of God, the visible Spirit of God within the temple. 3. The fire from heaven to light the altar of sacrifice. and 4. The Ark of the Covenant, the golden box which represented the throne of God and which contained the stone tablets upon which God had given Moses the Ten Commandments. That's a sad commentary on a temple, that the building itself would be finished and yet lack these things and I've always wondered why God would let that happen. After all it had been God who commanded that the temple be built. In fact, He had sent prophets such as Haggai to keep the construction going with timely messages of "don't quit." And I've always wondered why God would allow such a temple to be built if it was going to lack what to me would certainly be essential elements! But I got my answer this week because I felt like God showed me that those elements weren't there at the beginning of the temple of Zerrubabel but they eventually got there from God. How? Because this was the temple that one day, hundreds of years later that a man who was more than a man, named Jesus Christ walked into! And I want to tell you that when Jesus Christ walked into that building, the temple was complete! Because Jesus Christ was the Shekina, God's Spirit taking on a visible form! He was the great God of Glory become visible by becoming flesh! His Spirit would be the Holy Ghost and fire with which He would baptize the living sacrifice of His believers! Who needed the ten commandments, when you realize that Jesus Christ was THE WORD made flesh! The day He entered, the temple had "the living Word" within it. And of course when He was teaching and the people asked Him questions, they had something greater than the Urim and Thummim had ever had because they were hearing the answers of heaven directly from the One who got off His throne to come and dwell among them!

So technically, given a little time, even Zerrababel's little temple was finally the recipient of God's presence. And the point that I was trying to make before I got off into all of that was that Jesus Christ walked into a finished temple. So there it is: every temple in the Bible that God ever inhabited, was finished before He came in, but we find under Grace that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, therefore when someone receives the Holy Ghost it is the only time in the history of the universe that God moves into an unfinished temple! When God comes into your life, it doesn't make you instantly perfect, but it begins a building project in your spiritual walk! For the first time in history, God has chosen to move into an unfinished building and help guide the work on His temple!

There used to be a little song that we sang as little kids that said:

He's still working on me, to make me what I ought to be.

It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars,

The earth and sun and jupiter and mars.

How loving and patient He must be,

He's still working on me.

Not only is it a cute little song, but is scriptural fact! The God of glory has chosen to move into an unfinished temple, but when He does, the building project begins! He begins to try to clean it up, and tear down the shoddy work, and put the good stuff within as would fit the habitation of the King of Kings! Viewed from this angle, our lives and walks with God are one great building project as God's temple. Really, the infilling of the Holy Ghost begins the real construction in earnest!

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I've helped my father with a few building projects growing up. We built a new church together. We remodeled two others. We converted an old church into an house, and built a cabin together. I've had a small part in a few projects, and the one point that stands out to me is that every time we completed a building project, there was always something that we learned the hard way! It could be years later and someone else would be talking about building a church or a cabin or such, and my dad would say something like "well, I've built one of those before and let me give you a word of wisdom: don't do this, or be careful that this doesn't happen..." A building project always teaches you lessons that you want to remember so that the next time you won't make the same mistakes! After the building project is finished, there's always something that you "wish you'd done different."

In physical building, we can always just try to get it right the next time, but in our spiritual temples of our lives, we only get one chance. You only live your mortal life here on earth once, and there are no restarts or reset buttons. Sometime we "gotta learn the hard way," but life is too short to learn everything the hard way! Thank God that He is merciful! But, sooner or later you are going to learn that we need to learn from other people's building projects so that we don't leave something out that was needed or make the same mistakes!

So let's do that tonight, and for the remainder of this lesson, I'd like to point out to you some lessons learned from a building project in the Bible, one of the greatest ones in fact: the building of Solomon's temple. I would like to point out a few lessons learned of what to do and what not to do that are found in that building project. The story of his project is found in 1 Kings around chapter 7-10 and such. I read these chapters a few times this week and here are some of the things that stood out to me as important lessons learned from this building project:

1. Get good blueprints and follow them.

Solomon actually didn't design his temple nor get the blueprints straight from God, it was the desire of his father, King David, to build a temple. God wouldn't let David build the temple because he was constantly at war throughout his reign, and that's an important lesson of temple building in itself: you are never going to be able to build your life into the temple of the Holy Ghost that it should be if you are constantly "at war" with people whether that "people" be your family, spouse, kids, parents, enemies, or strangers. People who are always at odds with someone will have a hard time following God's blueprints!

So God told David, "I'll let your son build the temple but I'll give you the blueprints and you can begin to get the material together." So Solomon got the blueprints from his temple from his father, a man who was "after God's own heart" and whose relationship with God was correct and in truth and could be verified. Solomon could build from those plans because of whom he received them!

There are many people who call themselves "Christians" out there and who claim to have Christ within their life, but it is obvious that not everyone is building from the same blueprints! Remember that you'd better choose and use your blueprints carefully. And as for me, I'll choose to go back to the original blueprints of the church that Jesus Christ gave His disciples directly, and model my temple after the original Church of the Book of Acts! You've heard me say it before and you'll hear me say it again, "if anybody had it right, then the people that Jesus trained -- Peter, James, John, Paul, Mark, -- had it right!" If you are going to copy a movement or a set of beliefs, then we better model ourselves after the original Apostolic church. We'd better live as they taught and showed us how to live. We'd better preach what they preached. We'd better do the things that they commanded for us to do! The book of Acts needs to be our blueprint for building the temple of God!

And there is a great danger in leaving something out! While we were building our new church in South Louisiana, we inherited the unfinished shell from the previous pastor. I remember one day I was playing Nintendo and my dad was looking over the blueprints to familiarize himself with what to do next, when all of sudden he yelled "I ain't believing this!" When my mother and I came running, he said "look, do you see what's wrong?" We looked at what looked to me very professionally done blueprints. Everything looked right and looked impressive and I couldn't see anything wrong with them. That is until my Father pointed out that they had left something out of our two story church: stairs! There was a second floor and plans for rooms and everything looked great except nowhere in the plans had they remembered to put a way to get from level 1 to level 2! Just a small thing, right!?

I don't care how impressive the blueprints look and how great the religion seems, if it leaves something out, then eventually you are going to have problems getting where you need to go! Not only do we need to go back to the original blueprints of the First Church, but we need to make sure that we leave nothing out. If something's missing, we'll eventually have trouble moving up! And you'd better stick to the blueprints and don't do things your own way, because if you do, it will end up costing you way more than you expected! Lessons from a building project!

2. Don't try to build a temple by yourself.

We find that Moses enlisted others to help with much of the work and particular skills that were needed for the tabernacle. We find that Solomon did the same with his temple. He sent off for others to help him gather the supplies. He enlisted the king of Tyre to help him get the lumber. He got people who were skilled in the areas of stone cutting, and wood carving and bronze casting and such to come and lend their talents to his building. Solomon was a wise man, wise enough to know that if he tried to build the temple by himself, that it would have ended up a mess!

It is true in the Spirit, also. God has not given you the ability to build everything in your walk with God by yourselves. That goes for me, and it goes for you. You need a pastor and you need the ministry. Paul wrote that the ministry was for the "edification and perfecting of the saints." You need the gifts and efforts of other men and women in your life. I've known people who had the attitude "I've got the Holy Ghost, and so I can study all I need to study by myself, and I can have church on my own by myself, and I can live for God all by myself." Good luck. Not only will you get frustrated in trying to do it all, but your temple will be only a shadow of what God intended for it to be. God makes sure that you need the gifts of other men and women to help you. "iron sharpenth iron" the writer wrote and so you need to be around other Godly men and women and allow their lives to sharpen and shape and lend their abilities to your temple! Learn the lesson from Solomon, a lesson from his building project, don't try to build your temple by yourself!

3. Put the right kind of windows in your temple.

It's an interesting verse of scripture and it stands out in the story simply because of the way it's worded in the Hebrew. Let read it to you:

1 Kings 6:4 And for the house he made windows of narrow lights.

Solomon constructed a feature in his temple that Moses didn't have in his and that was high up near the ceiling of the actual temple itself, he put small, narrow windows. The word in the Hebrew literally means "narrowing." Most Bible scholars believe that they were windows that were narrow on the outside and wide on the inside. That is, they were beveled throughout the wall. This fact, along with their placement high up near the ceiling, shows that these were not windows that were designed to look outside through. They served two important functions: 1. They let light in, and 2. they let the smoke from the altar of incense and the golden candlesticks out. And they were there to do this everyday.

We could go into this a little deeper, but let's just point out that as you build your relationship with God and as your temple project continues, you need to put some of these type windows in your life! Every day, you need the light of revelation and truth to shine within you and to search you and to reveal to you what's going on in the inside. Everyday you need to allow the light to penetrate to the darkest corners of your heart and make sure that everything is in order inside God's temple and that nothing is hidden within that would defile His precious home! You also need everyday to send forth the incense of prayer and praise out of your temple to rise toward the heavens! Put some windows into your life that will be a permanent feature. Every day you ought to find a place to praise God. You ought to find a place to talk to Him! And as the light of His truth and love shines in, send your praise and prayer back to Him the same way!

Learn the lessons of Solomon's building project: You need the right kind of windows in your life! I've known people to try to make it without any windows of prayer and praise and truth, and that won't work! I've know people's windows to be placed lower and all they ever do is gaze outward at where they wish they could be instead of where they were! I've known people's windows to be wider on the outside and narrower on the inside and they wanted truth and wanted the light of God's revelation, but they didn't want to send anything back out! It's very important: you need the right kind of windows in your temple!

So far we've talked about lessons learned from things that Solomon did right in his temple. But now let's turn our attention to some of the mistakes that Solomon made. There are some tremendous lessons that can be learned from the things that Solomon did wrong in his building project and we certainly don't want to learn these things the hard way!

4. Make your altar large enough to hold your sacrifice.

We read the verses as our other text. Solomon got his temple ready for the dedication. And so he begin the process of cleansing the temple and offering sacrifices unto God. Solomon wanted to offer a huge amount of sacrifice before God, and that he did because the scriptures say that he offered 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep! I don't know how big your ranch is, but by my lot, that's a lot of animal sacrifices! The problem came when Solomon began to have the many priest offer the sacrifices, because he quickly realized that he had made his altar too small to hold it. And so in 1 Kings 8:64 we find that Solomon had to cleanse and hallow the entire midcourt so that they could create makeshift altars to offer up the large amount of animals. Oops, it's kind of like the stairs and nobody thought about that until it happened!

Unfortunately, I've known people to make the same mistake spiritually in their walk with God. There is a desire within everyone of us to do something for the kingdom of God. We want to be a sacrifice, and even though it may not always come out, deep within everyone of us there is a desire to do something great for God. To be used mightily. To sacrifice beyond anything that we've ever done before. To give of ourselves extravagantly. And there's nothing wrong with that. After all, since Jesus gave everything shouldn't we also be willing to give sacrificially of our money and time and effort!?

But the problem arises in our prayer lives, our altars. Because even the greatest sacrifice will be wasted if your altar is not big enough to hold it! The problem is that we don't realize that our prayer life needs to be bigger until we begin the sacrifice and so we immediately try to make some makeshift altars in our life. And so our sacrifice and work for the kingdom of God ends up tiring us, stressing us out, and not quite be the success that it should be, all because we didn't make our altars big enough ahead of time! If you frustrated in what you are doing for God, burn out, or feel as if you are just "improvising to get by another day" then the problem is the size of your altar! Make sure that your altar is big enough to hold your sacrifice!

"Brother Sibley, I want to teach Bible studies and win 20 people to God." That's great, you need to, how's your prayer life? "Brother Sibley, I feel called to teach Sunday School, or preach, or work in this ministry." We need you, but wait, just one thing! How's your prayer life? "Bro. Sibley, I'm ready to do anything that I need to do for us to have revival, I'm on fire for God!" That's awesome, but understand something. Your desire after a Sunday night service will not do you any good if you don't build your altar big enough to hold the sacrifice! Revival comes through prayer lives and it continues through prayer lives. A person too busy to pray is a person too busy to go to heaven! I've heard it said and it's true: all spiritual failure is a prayer failure. We need to learn to pray! We need to spend time in prayer! There's nothing more important in our lives and we must learn from Solomon's mistake: build your altar big enough to hold your sacrifice!

5. Build God's house before you build your house, and never get the attitude that God's house is finished.

This was one of Solomon's biggest mistakes. Seven times in 1 Kings it is stated that Solomon "finished the house of the Lord." Seven times he got the attitude that "it's finished." And it is interesting to mark that after Solomon felt like that God's house "was finished" was what started the downward trend in Solomon's spiritual lives. Notice the degradation of Solomon's building projects in his life:

God's Temple

Solomon's own house - 1 Kings 7:1

House for his new wife, Pharaoh's daughter - 1 Kings 7:8-12

Cities and stables for his many horses - 1 Kings 9:15

Built temples to idols - 1 Kings 11:1-8

The first step of building his own house seems innocent enough and the others don't seem to bad, until you realize what Moses had commanded way back in Deuteronomy. To impress upon you the magnitude of what Solomon was doing I think it's important to turn and read Moses' exact words:

Deut 17:14-20 When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; 15 Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother. 16 But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way. 17 Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold. 18 And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: 20 That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.

The problem was that once Solomon got the attitude that the temple of the Lord was finished, then he began to build other things that became more and more ungodly. First, he began to build "his own house." Then he broke just one commandment of God by marrying a foreign wife. Then he broke a few more by having horses, which Moses had forbidden the kings of Israel to stockpile. And then, Solomon is spending the end of his life building temples to idols in the holy city of God! It reveals to us a progression, the progression of someone who gets the attitude that "my temple is finished!"

I've known people with that same attitude that they had changed all that they needed to change and that they had reached a level that they no longer needed to work on anything. I've know people who felt that way about certain areas of their life. I'm going to tell you: you are not perfect in any area. You need to keep working on every area of your life: doctrine, prayer, praise, study, love, your marriage, your family, your job, carnality, your tongue, your dealings with other people. Your temple and my temple is far from finished! Jesus could say "it is finished" only because He was the perfect man and His flesh was dying. As long as you've got flesh alive, you will never be able to say "it is finished."

And the story of Solomon reveals to us the danger of getting the attitude that "it is finished," because then you begin to build your own house. You begin to do things your way. You begin to put what you want before the will of God, and eventually such an attitude will lead to breaking one commandment, and then another and then another, and before long, you will be using the breath and blessings that God gave you to worship and bless idols!

Don't build your house before the house of God! You need to put God first in your life. In every area you should consider "what is the will of God in this area and what does the scripture have to say about this?" In fact, don't build your own house until the house of God is finished. You might say "but I thought you said that you should never get the attitude that the house of God is finished." You're right, and you just learned the secret of Solomon's mistake: once you start building your own house and doing things your way rather than God's, His temple begins to be neglected!

How many people sacrifice the will of God and church and prayer and consistency and obedience in trying to "build their own house" and get the things that they desire? And the sad thing is that many of them never learn the principle of God's Word that if you put God first, then He will give you the other things that you desire that are holy. Jesus said:

Matt 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you .

Mark 10:29-30 And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, 30 But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses , and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

It's an important principle to learn from Solomon's little building projects: build the house of God and put it's building first in your life, and if you do so you will find that you have received everything that you could have possibly wanted in the process. And Jesus said that you would receive it "an hundred fold." If you will build God's house first and never stop working on it, then you will receive in your own house, 100x what you would have received if you had spent all of that effort on your house only! Such is God's math! And it works! It works! And it's important to learn!

Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and a temple so much more important than Solomon's temple. Don't skimp on the foundation, and put the gold on the inside. And remember all of the other lessons that we have learned! Simple lessons but very important ones. Lessons from a building project!