Building a House of Joy

Why does what we build matter? We’ll explore how prioritizing God’s work creates space for more lives to be changed and why every seat represents a story.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Amen. Well, hey, we are in the book of Haggai. It's a minor prophet in the Old Testament, so it's pretty close to the New Testament, but you'll be able to skip over it really easy if you're not kind of slowing down and making sure you find it. So if you have a Bible or an app, open it to Haggai, two chapters. That's all that this minor prophet consists of. But we're going to see how a prophecy from 25 centuries ago speaks to us as God's living word today. So Haggai chapter 1. That's where we're going to be. Now, here, I want to tell you something about this building that may or may not surprise you. Okay? This building that you're sitting in, it was built for those not here yet. And I don't mean that as just a motivationally compelling statement. I genuinely want to submit that to you as a theological one. And I think it's one of the most important things that I could say to us as we as a church family step into this multiplied joy together. The building we gather in every Sunday, the space we've prayed in and worshipped in and poured ourselves into over the last seven years, it was never meant to simply be ours. It was always meant to be a means, a capacity, a door that was held open for those who haven't walked through it yet. And the reason we're talking about what's next, it's not because we want a nicer facility. It's not because we want to construct something for our own glory. It's because the mission that God has been doing in and through us has produced something. It's a spiritual house that's been built, made of living stones, and it's growing faster than our physical space can contain. That's a gift. That's a good gift. And gifts like that come with a demand for faithful stewardship. So this morning I want to show us that demand from one of the most neglected books in the entire Bible, right? The book of Haggai. As I said, it's only two chapters long, but it carries in it this piercing prophetic diagnosis of God's people. Here's the context. It's 520 BC. The Jewish exiles, they've returned from Babylon, they've been released from captivity, they've made the long journey home, and they've begun to rebuild their lives in the land that God had promised to their fathers. 16 years have now passed at the time of this prophecy since the foundation of the temple was laid. Sixteen years. And that temple, the dwelling place of God among the people, the center of their worship and their national identity, it's still just laying there in ruins. And here's the thing: nobody seems particularly bothered about that reality. So let's read what God says about it. Haggai 1, 1 through 5. In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Sheelteel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehosedak, the high priest. Thus says the Lord of hosts. Capture this in your mind. We're going to revisit this. These people say, The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Now I want you to notice something about that prophecy before we dive further into it. God doesn't begin the prophecy by rebuking his people. God begins that prophecy by repeating their excuse. These people say the time has not yet come. That's a condemning thing. That's something that we have to wrestle with in this passage. God simply repeats themselves back to themselves. And it's devastating because it reveals that the problem is not that they've forgotten to rebuild the temple. It's that they've made a choice in their heart. They've looked at the ruins that lay around them and they've said, not now, maybe later. The time just hasn't come yet. And God's response to them is a question that cuts straight into the heart of their priorities. Verse 4. Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? Man, paneled houses in the ancient Near East. That was a sign of comfort and luxury. It wasn't just some essential shelter that they kind of built this lean to to be able to survive. No, it was a purposeful building of their own flourishing. These people weren't just surviving. They were actually thriving in their own houses while God's house sat unbuilt. And then God produces this challenging word to them. We see it here in verse 5, and we also see it in verse 7. He says, Consider your ways. Now the the original Hebrew is a much more vivid reality than what our translation is able to actually produce. But what it means is to sit and contemplate the desires and motivations of your heart. To really look at how you're living and what that lifestyle is producing. And what has it produced for God's people? Well, he names it very clearly in verse 6. He says, You have sown much and harvested little. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. Here's what God is saying to his people. And the reality of comfort of that pursuit is that it is insatiable. It cannot be satisfied. It cannot be accomplished. You can eat and eat and eat, but you will still be hungry. You can drink, but you'll still be thirsty. You can try and clothe yourself, but you will still be cold. You cannot produce in your life the comfort that you are trying to accomplish. The problem isn't that God's people are building. And for whom. You see, God tells them that he actually has a sovereign part in what they're experiencing. Verse 9, he says this. He says, here's why you're experiencing this. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. You see, they've turned inward. They're not looking around them at the mission that they should be on, the work that they should be accomplishing. No, they've actually turned inward. And so the paneled houses that he points out, those are just symptoms. Those are just symptoms. The self-seeking comfort that has replaced sacrificial mission is the disease. So now after the heart diagnosis of chapter one, man, comes this glorious promise of chapter two, verse nine. Says this the latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts. Man, this is an extraordinary promise made to God's people in the midst of their willful rebellion. You see, God looks at them. And he says, he says to his people, don't be distracted from mission. Don't let your heart be carried off into comfort seeking. Build the house. Build the house, and I will fill it with a glory greater than anything that you've seen before. And that promise, 2-9, it's the hinge of this entire prophecy that is laid out through Haggai. And before you and I can actually receive it fully, we need to understand what kind of house God is actually building. Because Haggai is pointing to something far greater and more glorious than a physical, literal, rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. Here's what I pray we're able to see this morning, right? Rooted in Haggai's prophecy, fulfilled in Christ and pressing urgently on us as his people right now. The mission of the church demands the building of the church. The mission of the church demands the building of the church. Let me try to work and show you what I mean in this. The New Testament actually makes an extraordinary claim about the nature of the temple. When Jesus arrives on the scene, right? God in human flesh, the word who became flesh and tabernacled or dwelt among us, as John 1.14 puts it. He doesn't go in and try and renovate the physical temple. He doesn't try to build an addition in this court, right? No. What does Jesus do? He comes and he fulfills it, he replaces it. He actually declares himself to be the true meeting place between God and humanity. He refers to himself in the midst of the temple to the Pharisees in John 2.19. He says this destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. And John tells us just two verses later in 21 that he was speaking not about the physical temple, but he was speaking about the temple of his body. You see, the physical temple in Jerusalem was always pointing to him, the true and faithful Israel. And then after Jesus' resurrection and ascension, that something even more remarkable happens. The Spirit of the living God, who once filled Solomon's temple with this visible glory, now takes up residence, not in a building of stone, but in a community of people. Look how the Apostle Peter describes the church in 1 Peter 2, 5. He says, You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Paul, he tells the Ephesians the same thing in chapter 2 of his letter. Christ is the cornerstone, the church is the structure, growing into a holy temple, a dwelling place for God by his spirit. And so have we begun to begin to connect the dots and see what this means for us? The house that God is building is not made of stone or studs or drywall. It's made of people. Every person who hears the gospel, who repents of their sin, and is welcomed into the community of faith is another living stone that is added to the spiritual house of God. The church, the people saved by grace through faith in Jesus. That's the temple. And church mission is how it gets built. As we live life on mission with the gospel in hand, we are discovering these living stones throughout our culture. And when they come into the body of Christ by grace, through faith, in his finished work, oh man, there's another stone laid for the house of God. Every mission group that multiplies, every neighbor who hears the gospel, every person who's baptized into this community is another living stone in the active work of building the house. And here's where Haggai's land word lands with full force on us today, right? We've been a people who's been on mission. We've been at work building the spiritual house by God's grace for seven years. This church has been doing the work of mission, and God has been adding living stones one by one. That's why space feels so limited in our parking lots, right? Last Sunday there were people circling the neighborhood trying to find a place to park. That's why our kids' classes feel so full, and we have to close some down and not accept other children into them because there's just so many of these guys running around, right? And our gathering space. We've had people come in and leave because they didn't feel like there was a seat for them. The mission that builds the spiritual house has created an urgent, practical, God-given need for the physical house to grow with it. Because the mission of the church demands the building of the church. These aren't competing priorities. These are integrated realities of what we've been called to. Listen, I've been a part of other church building campaigns, and nine times out of ten, it's this field of dreams approach. It's a hundred people thinking if they build a big enough building, 500 people are gonna fill it. We're trying to steward what God is already doing here. We're not saying if you build it, they will come. We're saying they're here now. What are we gonna do about it? And how are we gonna keep living on mission? And how are we gonna keep adding people to it? And how our mission groups are gonna multiply, and how is evangelism gonna produce conversion? And how are we gonna disciple people? And how are we gonna have more kids because y'all ain't slowing down and we got to make space for them, right? To hear Jesus. How are we gonna do that? The mission of the church, it demands the building of the church. You cannot say to the Great Commission, yes, and no to the capacity required to fulfill it. You cannot commit to making disciples and then shrug at the fact that there's nowhere left to put them. We need to wrestle with this. But ultimately, we need to wrestle what's going on in our hearts because Haggai's diagnosis of the returning exiles in Israel, it actually fits us more accurately today than most of us would like to admit. Because here's where many of us in this room are. We simply say with them, the time has not yet come. The time has not yet come. And maybe we don't use those words, right? Maybe we're too self-aware or too put together for that to spill out of our mouth. But the sentiment is there. We've heard it, we've experienced it, we've felt it in the thousand quiet ways that ultimately we prioritize our own comfort over the sacrificial demands of mission. Here's how I think some of us are saying the time has not yet come. Many of us were unwilling to engage in the mission. Man, we've flourished because of faithful mission happening, but there's still several people who just are unwilling to engage in what the Lord has called us to as his people. You're not against the church. In fact, you love the church. You genuinely love the church. You show up on Sundays, you enjoy mission group, you're grateful for what's been built here, but somewhere along the way, the church has become a place that you receive from rather than a mission you participate in. When asked about evangelism, right? When pressed about who you're sharing the gospel with, we'll say, Well, we're just waiting for the right moment. We know our neighbors, we just haven't gotten around to having that conversation yet. The time hasn't quite come. When asked about belonging in a mission group, we'll very quickly say, This season of life is just too busy. The kids have activities, work is demanding, and honestly, Sundays right now, they just feel like enough. The time hasn't quite come. When asked about discipling someone, we'll say, we're not sure we're ready for that. We don't feel equipped enough, mature enough, prepared enough. The time hasn't quite come. But here's what the prophecy of the Lord says to us. While we wait for the right moment to magically appear, the spiritual house of the Lord goes unbuilt. While we prioritize our own comfort and schedules, living stones that could have been added remain outside of the house. Because our not yet, church, we have to hear this. Our not yet has a cost. And that cost is being paid by the people who need the gospel. The paneled house that we're busy with isn't necessarily a physical structure that we've been building. It's a comfortable life, carefully managed, that leaves just enough margin to enjoy the church and what it offers without the cost of actually building it. And Jesus, the one who left the Father's house to build his church, is calling us to get our hands dirty in this work. Some of us, though, we construct a different kind of challenge. We're not necessarily unwilling to engage in the mission, but we are unwilling to support the building. We are unwilling to support the building. And I want to try to say this with care. And I want you to try to hear what I am saying, not what I'm not saying. Our resistance in this, it's subtle, and it actually sounds much more spiritual, right? Because we talk about things like intimacy, about how much we love the family feel of this church, how everyone knows everyone, how sacred mission doesn't feel like a big church, and we'd really like to keep it that way. We're a little worried that expanding the facility means losing something that is actually really precious to us. And if we sit with this the same way God told the exiles to consider their ways, we'll find something that's driving the concern for intimacy that we'd really rather not name in this moment. At the end of the day, we like it the way it is. We're comfortable. We belong. We know where we sit and who sits around us, and how everything works here. Because the reality of growth is that it is destructive. And so a generosity initiative like this, it's not just inconvenient for us, it's threatening to us. Because it threatens the loss of the things that we love. And hear me, as one of your pastors, speak clearly to you this morning. If you didn't feel that sadness, if you didn't feel that loss, man, I would have huge concern for your spiritual health. At the same time, if you didn't have a more glorious vision of what could and ought to be, that was driven by a passion for the glory of God and the good of others, if that wasn't present in you, I would be equally concerned. Because what do you and I have to do? We have to inhabit that tension. We have to inhabit that tension. Let me tell you something. My oldest daughter Addison, she is getting ready to graduate, leave the house, move to college. There's going to be a hole in our home. And I can't tell you the days that my heart has been filled with sorrow and grief over walking past her bedroom and knowing she's not going to be there that night. Over sitting around to watch a movie and she's not there with us. The loss there is so real that Katie's and eyes have been filled with tears over it. But what am I going to do? What's right and proper and healthy? Am I just going to Rapunzel her? Right? Just lock her. That's what I want to do in my heart. I just want to keep her. I don't want anything to change. I don't want anything to happen. I just want to keep her how it is because I love how it is. But do you know what also resides within us? A more glorious vision for what is yet to come? Man, when we send her out of the house and she finds her vocation that she works diligently for, for the glory of God and the good of other people, when she finds a spouse to be in covenant relationship with, when she bears children and my grandbabies that I get to see raised in the church, baptized amongst his people, this believe in the gospel of Jesus. And by God's grace, I get to see great-grandchildren be born unto this lineage and this heritage that I've prayed for and believed for. That's a more glorious, more good, more beautiful, more true vision of what could be. How dare I try to white knuckle the sadness that has entered my heart? At the cost of what? At the cost of everything good and beautiful and glorious. Church, we don't have the right to do that here. You know my living room has holes in it. My living room has holes where the Grigsby's once sat, where Amber and DJ Granville once sat and prayed with us and worshiped with us and studied the Bible together with us. There's holes there. If you think that I don't feel that on Wednesday night at group, but you know what? When we multiplied so that more people could be brought in to this thing called the church, so that they could study God's word and mature in Christ, so that they could worship and pray together. Man, that's a more glorious vision. And I sit with that sorrow, but I rejoice of what can be. Paul's letters are drenched in tears at the loss that the gospel cost him, of people. But he had a more glorious vision of what should be. And that's got to be us. It's gotta be. Or for the people who aren't here yet? We've invested in a spiritual house that fits us perfectly. And without realizing it, we've begun to treat it as our paneled house. Something to be protected and preserved rather than expanded for the sake of those not here yet. And Jesus, who gave up every comfort to make room for every one of you, is calling us to consider our ways. You see, many of us, we've been saying in our hearts, the time has not yet come. And God's response to us is the same response He gave to the exiles 25 centuries ago through Haggai. Consider your ways. And I believe the call to action is still build the house. Build the house. Every living stone that's laid in the spiritual house of God in some way demands a physical stone laid for them to find a place within the local church and the community of God's people. So where's our hope at this morning, right? It's not in nicer bathrooms, even though they're like three weeks away. Praise God. And our hope is in Christ, the true temple. Because Jesus is the true temple, and he is still building his house one living stone at a time. I want you to feel the weight of what that means. He's building his house. Are we building with him? When Haggai delivered God's word to these people, when he told them the latter glory of the house would be greater than the former, he was pointing to something his listeners could not fully see. Because the greater glory was not going to be architectural in nature. It wasn't going to come through more intricate and ornate detail or a more magnificent structure. No, it was going to enter our existence in human flesh. John says it this way. John 1.14, we've already referenced the word became flesh and he dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. That word dwelt there in John 1.14. It's the word for tabernacle. Jesus tabernacled among us. He pitched his tent, took up residence, moved into our existence. And the glory that once filled Solomon's temple with this overwhelming, trembling presence had arrived this time in the person of Jesus, because he is the house of God, the true meeting place between heaven and earth, the one in whom God and humanity are joined, not by sacrifice offered on an altar made by human hands, but by the sacrifice he himself became for us. And on the cross, Church, he gave everything to build what we could never build with our own hands. And he never said the time has not yet come when it came to the fullness of the mission. He did not say not yet when it was his time to climb Golgotha. He didn't protect his comfort when the mission demanded sacrifice. He didn't preserve himself. No, he left the glories of heaven. He entered the poverty of our condition. He poured himself out completely so that the house of God could be built from his own broken body and shed blood. You see, the spiritual house being built, one living stone at a time, is built on that foundation. And every stone placed into it, every person rescued by the gospel, welcomed into the community of faith, is there because Jesus paid the price to put them there. And church, he's still building. Right now, in this city, there are people who don't know yet that their living stones waited to be placed in the house. Jesus is building his house, and the invitational charge to us is to join him in the missional work. Every act, every seat, every church, all of it is Jesus building his house. And he's calling us to build with him. That's what this whole thing, multiply joy, is really about. It's not about institutional growth for our own glory, for our own sake and pride and ego. It's about capacity to continue to steward the work that God is doing. Because the mission is producing living stones faster than our physical space can receive them. And Jesus, the master builder, is not going to slow the mission down to meet our refusal to participate in it. This is his church, not ours. And so he's calling us to build. So my prayer for us, church, is that we would build a house of joy. Man, that's the promise fulfilled in Christ. That's the promise placed into our hands today. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts, and in this place I will give peace. He's making the same promise to us. Not that the physical structure will be impressive, but that when his people build faithfully, for his glory, for the good of the people who aren't here yet, he will fill what they built with his presence. So here's what I want for us. For the one who's been saying, not yet, to the sacrifice of mission. Man, I pray that you catch a vision so beautiful and glorious and urgent that not yet stops being an option. The not yet of sharing the gospel with those around you, the not yet of participating in community, the not yet of serving the city, the not yet of being sent on mission, the not yet of men stepping up to the office of elder, the not yet of those who want to serve the church with their gifts, the not yet that we keep saying. I just pray that it's not an option anymore. Because we see that the people outside these walls are the very living stones that Jesus died for, that he's building his house with. To step into mission and start the essential work of building the spiritual house of God. And for the ones sitting here this morning that you just love what we've built and you're reluctant to see it change, like just know I am with you in your sadness. But I pray that you can see what's next, not as a threat to what we love, but as an overflow of it. Because every new person who finds a seat and encounters Jesus, man, they become a part of the family. They become a part of the family. Every child who's welcomed to mission kids. They become one of our kids, whether we like it or not. I've stopped learning their names. They're multiplying faster than gremlins. I'm trying to, I'm just gonna go the old uh Mormon route. Just I'm gonna pick a letter of the year and every kid, that's your Jace, all the way through, right? It's wonderful though. I love this house being filled with the noise of children. Every family who finds belonging in a mission group, it becomes part of what we love about this church. We're not building for ourselves, we're building for them. Every seat we add, every dollar we invest, it's a stone laid for a living stone that's not here yet. Because the mission that builds the house demands the building that serves the mission. So here's our invitation. Consider your ways. It's not a rebuke, that's a genuine opportunity for us to put our heart bare before the Lord. He gave the same word to his people, not to condemn them, but to awaken them. To awaken them to something they had stopped seeing. The foundation of ruins, it was always right in the midst of them. They were just preoccupied with their own comfort. And so his call was stop. Consider. Consider. Where have you been saying, not yet? Where have you been protecting what's yours instead of building for those who aren't here yet? Jesus is still building his church. A church that he has promised he will build till its completion, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. He's not finished yet. So let's build with him. Amen.