Let's go back to the book of
Zechariah. This morning, I'm going to go
to chapter 1. We'll go back to chapter 4, the
Lord willing, next Lord's Day. But I want to bring you a message
here from chapter 1 of Zechariah. I want to talk to you about God's
house. God's house. I, of course, knowing what I'm
going to speak on this morning, as the Lord enables me, I wanted
to begin the service by using the words of the psalmist. I
was glad when they said into me, let us go into the house
of the Lord. That is to God's house. And I want to talk to you about
God's house this morning. So we're in Zechariah chapter
1. And one verse, verse 16. Zechariah 1, 16, Therefore thus
saith the Lord, I am returned to Jerusalem, with mercies. Oh, how wonderful it is when
God comes to us with His hands full of mercies. And may He indeed make this to
be His house this morning. And if our God comes to us as
we exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, and set forth His Gospel, the
Lord will come to us with hands full of mercy. He says, My house, that's what
God called the temple. He said, My house shall be built
in it, in this city, said the Lord of hosts. and the line shall
be stretched forth upon Jerusalem." God's house. Now let me just
kind of bring you up to speed on what's going on here in case
you haven't heard some of the previous messages. And if you
have, a little bit of review is always good. had seen fit to put the Jews
into Babylonian captivity. And there they lay in their bondage
until God was pleased to release them. He used a man, a man by the name
of Cyrus, He raised Him up. In fact, God said in Isaiah,
Isaiah 44-28, God said, He's my shepherd. And then in Isaiah
45-1, He said, He's my anointed. God raised Him up and God gifted
Him to release the people of God from their captivity in Babylon. Cyrus was the king of the Persians. And he ultimately became king
over all the known world. And he issued this statute, this
law. And he said, the Jews, I release
them. I give them freedom. Go back
to their land. Rebuild their temple. and then
rebuild their city, Jerusalem. And when he issued that, the
people, thousands of Jews left, not all of them, some of them
came later, but in the first wave of people who left Babylon
and came, they had a man who was leading them, a man by the
name of Zerubbabel. And he would be the governor,
the leader of the people. Also had a high priest. His name
was Joshua. Not Joshua who led Israel into
the land of promise, but another Joshua. Later on, he became the
high priest. Both Zerubbabel and Joshua were
pictures of our Lord Jesus. Because as Zerubbabel was the
leader and the governor of the Jews, so our Lord Jesus is the
leader and the governor of His people. We have One who manages
all the concerns of God's elect, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is One who has released us from captivity, One greater
than Cyrus. And that's our Lord Jesus Christ.
And He is also our High Priest. So, when you consider Cyrus and
Zerubbabel and then Joshua, those three men are beautiful pictures
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Cyrus, he's the shepherd. He's the shepherd. God said,
He's my shepherd. God appointed Him to be shepherd.
We'll see the Lord willing next week, a couple of hundred years
before He became the King, the Lord through the writing of Isaiah
prophesied of this man Cyrus. And God said, He's my shepherd.
I appoint Him to be my shepherd. Even as God appointed Jesus Christ
to be the shepherd of His sheep. to lead us out of our captivity
and bondage to sin and Satan and the world. He's God's anointed
as Cyrus was. The Spirit of God came upon our
Lord Jesus Christ, John the Baptist said, not in measure, but the
fullness of the Spirit of God came upon him. And he's the shepherd
of God's people. He's the good shepherd who laid
down his life for the sheep. He's the Great Shepherd who was
the blood of the everlasting covenant. He's the Chief Shepherd
who shall come again in like manner, the messengers of God
said, as you've seen Him go. So here's our Lord Jesus. He's
the King. He's the Leader. He's the Deliverer from bondage. And He's the High Priest, as
Joshua was. What was the job of the high
priest? Two things. Offer sacrifices for people.
Our Lord Jesus, and I'm going to be talking about this tonight
from Hebrews chapter 10, He offered one sacrifice for sins forever,
and then He sat down. He's the only Savior. His blood,
the blood of the covenant, is the only blood that washes sins
away. His death satisfied God's demands,
God's justice for death. And His death upon the cross
of Calvary washed all the sins of His people away. And as I
wrote the words just a couple of days ago, we were like lepers
in our uncleanness. But the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ washes away our leprosy, our sins, our iniquities, our
transgressions. He's our great high priest who
offered the sacrifice unto God. One offering for sin forever
is what we read in Hebrews chapter 10. And then He's our high priest
in the sense that He makes intercession for us. That doesn't mean He's
begging God to show mercy to people. He Himself, His very
presence in the throne room of God, at the right hand of God,
His very presence demands forgiveness and righteousness for all those
in whose stead Christ died. And He sends His Spirit. Our
Lord Jesus called the giving of the Spirit the gift of the
Father, the promise of the Father, He said. The Spirit of God works
in the hearts of men and women and young people. Brings new
life. And with that new life comes
a willingness to come to Christ Jesus as the poor beggars that
we are. We're lepers. We're lepers. One of the men was telling me
his wife recently had, what do you call that? I just forgot
the name of it. Anyway, Brent, what's it? Shingles. Thank you. I couldn't think of
that word. Shingles. And he said she ought
to walk around saying, unclean, unclean. Let me tell you something. We're all spiritual lepers. Unclean, unclean. But I read
a while ago, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us
from all sin. Are you washed in the blood of
the Lamb? So here's Cyrus. He released
them from bondage. Here's Zerubbabel. He's the leader. He's the governor. He's the commander
of the people. Here's Joshua. He's the high
priest. Offered the sacrifices, made
intercession for the people. And God says to these men and
to all of the Jews who went forth out of Babylonian captivity,
build my house. Build my house. You notice God
calls it My house. Our Lord Jesus, so often He spoke
in the New Testament in the four Gospels, He referred to the temple
as My Father's house. And then at last He said, My
Father's house, it shall be called a house of prayer, a house of
worship. You've made it a den of thieves,
And I really think that's what most churches are today. They're
dens of thieves because they're robbing God of His glory or endeavoring
to do so. It's God's house. That's what
He called it. In Isaiah 66, you don't have
to turn to this. Thus saith the Lord, the heaven
is my throne. The earth is my footstool. Where
is the house that you will build unto me, he said, and where is
the place of my rest? For all of those things hath
mine hand made. But to this man will I look,
even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth
at my word. stories told of an uneducated
man. He was mocked by somebody who
was very highly educated, a man who nevertheless refused to believe
the word of God. And the man said to the poor
uneducated fellow, why don't you tell me about your God? Is He a great God or is He a
little God? And the believer thought for
a little bit and he said, my God's so great the heavens can't
contain Him. And yet He condescends to be
so little that He dwells in my heart. That's my God. That's a pretty good summary
of who God is. He's so great, He fills the universe. All of the universe is in Him.
He's everywhere. David said, Whither shall I go
to flee from the presence of God? If I ascend to heaven, thou
art there. He said, Behold, if I descend
to hell, even there you see me. You're there. that temple which God called
my house, it couldn't contain God. Our Lord, He's present everywhere. This little building here, it's
quite spacious for us, but it can't hold God. It can't contain
God. And yet, God is pleased to reveal
Himself from time to time in houses of worship. And when He does that, we may
say, it's God's house. God's house. I want you to turn
to Genesis chapter 28. Let me show you something over
here. Genesis chapter 28. This is about a man named Jacob. Jacob. He came to a certain place, got
dark, and of course, I guess he made a campfire and maybe
had a knapsack or something. Anyway, he went to sleep and
he had a dream. Look at verse 12, Genesis 28,
12. He dreamed, and behold, a ladder
set up on earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and
behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And behold,
the Lord stood above it. And the Lord said, I am the Lord
God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac, the land whereon
thou liest, to thee will I give it into thy seed. Thy seed shall
be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad
to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the
south. And in thee and in thy seed, that is one, Christ, in
thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And
behold, watch these promises of God to Jacob. And you know
in the Bible we're called, all of God's people are called the
sons of Jacob. We're the sons and daughters
of Jacob. Take hold of these promises that
the Lord made to our father Jacob. And behold, I am with thee. and
will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will
bring thee again into this land, for I will not leave thee until
I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." Let me tell
you something. You will live until you fulfill
God's purpose for you. And then you'll go home. And
you know where you'll go to? The Father's house. That's where
you'll go. Now watch this, verse 16. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep,
and he said, surely the Lord is in this place. And I knew
it not. I didn't know the Lord was going
to be here. And he was afraid. And he said, how dreadful, how
awesome is this place. This is none other but the house
of God. This is God's house. Wait a minute,
Jacob. You're laying out under the stars
of the sky. You have no roof. You have no
canopy over you. And yet here is the Lord revealing
Himself to you as the ladder, Christ as the ladder, who reaches
from earth to heaven. He's the only connection we have
to God. And he's the only connection
God has to us. He's the one meeting place. When he stood on this earth,
he was still in heaven because he was God over all, blessed
forever. And Jacob, having received this
vision from the Lord in his dream, he said, this is the house of
God. This is the gate of heaven. And
Jacob rose up early in the morning. He took the stone that he had
put for the pillars and he set it for a pillar. He poured oil
upon the top of it and he called the name of that place Bethel.
What does Bethel mean? Brother Rupert Rivenbark pastored
a church there outside of Fayetteville. Bethel Baptist Church. Bethel. What does that mean? The house
of God. Look at this. The name of that
city was called Luz at the first. You know what Luz means? Separated. Separated. What separates us
from God? What separates us from God? God
said, your sins and your iniquities have separated you from Me. He can't come to us. He's a consuming
fire. He'll destroy us. Well then, if there's this separation,
how in the world can God deal in mercy with us? How can God
embrace us in love and in grace and we embrace Him as a Father?
If you learn that, you'll learn what most people don't know.
The only way for God to be just and justify the ungodly is through
the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how He deals with us in
mercy. That's how He deals with us in
grace. Bethel. The house of God. You see, the house of God, that's
where God makes His presence known. Wherever it is. Wherever it is. The house of
God is not brick and mortar. The house of God is not an ornate
stately building, fancily decorated with all kinds of religious stuff. The house of God is where God
reveals Himself through His Son to poor sinners and we're led
to worship Him in spirit and in truth. And the house of God
may be for you when you're standing in the kitchen washing your dishes,
you're vacuuming, or you're on your job. It could be in here. That's the house of God when
God speaks to you and deals with you through the Lord Jesus Christ
in sovereign mercy and grace. And you're made to worship God
and honor Him and bless Him. for the grace He's given you
in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's made you righteous. He's
forgiven you of your sins. You have access into the heavenlies
through Jesus Christ, the great Mediator. When God does that
for you, you're in God's house. You're in the presence of God.
Let me give you four or five things here real quickly. Number
one, God's house is the place of God's presence. Jacob's all
alone. But God met him. God dealt with
him in mercy. He showed him Christ, the ladder
from earth to heaven. We have access to God. This is
good news for sinners. But there's only one access,
because there's only one ladder. There's only one way to God.
Christ is the way. You know, our Lord prayed and
preached when He was on this earth. He prayed and preached
in private houses. He preached and prayed in the
open air, on the mountainside, by the seashore, in a fishing
boat, as well as in the temple, in the synagogues, and wherever
He went. But wherever He went and He preached,
that was the house of God. I'm fully persuaded that today,
and I know this to be true, there's far too much emphasis placed
on a building than there is the very presence of God. Did you
know there were no church buildings as such up until the third century? Well, Jim, where in the world
did they meet? In houses? In caves? in the open air. They met in various places, but
they didn't have a church building. It's wherever God was pleased
to reveal Himself in His grace and in His mercy and reveal to
people the substitutionary sacrifice of the Son of God, that's where
God made His presence known. That was God's house. I remember
when my dad was felt led to start a church in Rocky Mount, Virginia. And we met in somebody's basement. And Brother Meeks was his name. And we brought in a truckload
of sawdust and put it on his basement, because his basement
floor was dirt. And we had sawdust that had the
shavings on the basement floor. And that's where we'd meet, had
folding chairs. And then for Sunday school classes,
guess where we met? Cars. Met in cars. And it'd be little Sunday school
classes. I remember I was in one. There's
like four or five of us. That's when cars are a whole
lot bigger than they are today. That's where we met at Sunday
school. Well, Jim, you think God would
meet with people sitting in a car? In an automobile? If his word
is being proclaimed, he will. Don't get me wrong. I'm thankful
for a comfortable building. And we're looking forward to
making some improvements in our building, indeed. Our door's
in bad shape. And we want to take care of the
building. We're thankful for that. But the building, that's
not the thing. Here's what we want. God's presence. You see, there are a lot of fancy
so-called church buildings. I have a dear brother in Michigan
who does this quite a lot. He's probably watching right
now and getting a big tickle out of this. They don't have a church building. Those people up there, they're
meeting in what used to be, I think, an office or something. It's
not where you meet. It's not where you gather. It's
in whose presence are you gathering. It's who is revealing Himself
wherever Christ the Lord, the Savior of sinners, is being magnified
and proclaimed and preached. That's God's house. God's house. God's house might be your house,
your home, and I hope it is. The Lord said in the book of
Hosea, He said, Israel has forgotten his maker and built the temples. Here's what they did. They built
one temple in Dan, and then they built another temple in Bethel. And there they worshipped false
gods, golden calves. And these were elaborate temples. They spared no expense. You know,
when I think about the Roman Catholic Church, the wealth,
the wealth that is over there, there's enough money there to
feed all the hungry in the world probably several times over.
And people go and look and they're amazed at the beauty and how
elaborate and how gorgeous it is. It's an empty shell. And that's what most So-called
church buildings are. They're just an empty shell.
Give me, give me the presence of God. I'll preach anywhere. Nice building,
I'm thankful for it. Comfortable? Yes. Heat in the winter and cooling
in the summer. Thankful for that. But that means
very, very little. And I'm thankful you're here.
But there's One whose presence we must have. And if He comes
to abide with us, then this is God's house. I'll tell you something else
about this. God's house is where God meets man and man meets God. That's Christ Jesus. He's God's
house. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto Himself. He was the temple of God. I asked
Ron to read that passage. Go back to John chapter 2. Real
quick. John chapter 2. Look at John 2. Our Lord, He
had performed His first miracle in Cana of Galilee. And then He goes to attend the
Passover. And it must have been an amazing
sight because the Passover was to remember the Passover Lamb,
how God passed over Israel when He said, when I see the blood,
I will pass over you. And our Lord Jesus, being true
in His obedience to obey the law of God, He went to Jerusalem
to attend the Passover. And He sees these merchandisers. They're selling these animals
for sacrifices, a matter of convenience rather than going somewhere and
buying one ahead of time, or getting one out of their own
flock or herd. They would buy it there at the
temple. And they had money changers and they're making money. They
inflate the prices. You know, when something is demanded,
people inflate the prices to make more money. That's kind
of the way it works. And here are these money changers.
And our Lord Jesus, He walked in and He saw all of this going
on. And as Ron read to us, he made a scourge of small courts. He drove everybody and everything
out, all the animals. He released the birds in the
cages and the sheep and the goats in the pens and the oxen that
were there that had been put up. He just released them all
and drove the people out. He said, look at verse 16, He
said, take these things hence, make not My Father's house a house of merchandise. Later
on, the disciples remembered what He said. So then in verse
18, then the Jews, then answered the Jews and said unto Him, what
sign, what evidence, what proof, Show us, thou unto us, seeing
that thou doest these things." What proof do you have to show
to us that you have the authority to enter into this temple and
do these things? to turn all of these tables over
and money going everywhere and drive the men and the animals
out? By what authority? Show us your authority. Is there
some evidence that you are who you say you are and that you
have the right to do this in this house? He said, well, destroy
this temple. In three days I'll raise it up. He said, well, it's 46 years
In building this temple, that is in rebuilding the temple,
you're going to rear it up in three days? But he spake of the
temple of his body. Let me tell you something. Our
Lord Jesus, He's the house of God. God dwelt in that earthly tabernacle. All that body, looked like any
other man's body. But He was the house of God. God's house. He is the temple
of God. How do we know Jesus of Nazareth
was God manifest in the flesh? Though He died for our sins according
to the Scriptures, He was raised again. Raised again. that proved He was the Son of
God with power. Our Lord Jesus, He's the house
of God. And I can say to all of you this
morning, may the Spirit of God give you grace to come to the
house of God. Come to Christ for salvation. And then here's something else.
God's house is every true believer. You're God's house. Turn to 1
Corinthians 6. 1 Corinthians 6. Every believer is, in this sense,
God's house. You're the temple of God. 1 Corinthians
6. Look at verse 19. He says, what? He's speaking
to these Corinthians now. 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. Listen, children of God. You're
the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost dwells in you. The Scripture says, Christ in
you, the hope of glory. Isn't that what it says? Let
me tell you something. That's God in you. That's the reason you have light
to understand and you have life to believe. Because God's in
you. By His Spirit. You're not your
own. Look at verse 20. Because you're
bought with a price. Oh, we're always led right back
to redemption. The Lord bought us with His blood.
Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which
are God's. God's house is every true believer. And then, fourthly, God's house
is the assembled church of the Lord. Turn back a couple of pages
to 1 Corinthians 3. 1 Corinthians 3. And verse 16.
Now he's talking to the whole church. He's talking to the assembly
of the saints. And he says, know ye not that
ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth
in you. And in that sense, this is the
house of God this morning. Not the building, the people. The people. We say things like,
well, I'm going to church today. You going to church today? And that's all right. I understand
that kind of language. But really, when the people aren't
here, this is just a building designated for worship. We're
the church. We're the temple of God. and
we gather in here. Did not our Lord Jesus say where
two or three are gathered together by effectual grace? In my name,
I'll be in the midst. That's the house of God. One
more, John chapter 14. John chapter 14. Our Lord is
leaving His disciples and they're troubled, they're upset. John 14, 1 and 2. He says to
them, and this is a consolation chapter, let not your heart be
troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my Father's house are many
mansions. John 14, 2. In my Father's house
are many mansions. I love the wording of this. My
father's house. This is a house not made by hands,
eternal in the heavens. My father's house. My father's house, not my father's
tent or my father's tabernacle. my Father's house, that shows
its permanency. What happens to believers at
death? Well, of course, the body breathes
its last. The heart stops beating. The
soul, which is the real you, the soul goes back to God. For
the children of God goes to the Father's house. Where's sister
so-and-so? Where's brother so-and-so? In
the Father's house. Oh, that's a pleasant thought,
isn't it? In the Father's house. You remember
our Savior said to Mary, after His resurrection, He said, you
go tell My disciples that you've seen Me, and that I go to My
Father, and your Father." And our Savior says, in my Father's
house, and since He's my Father, having adopted me into His family,
having sent His Son to be my Savior, having fulfilled His
promise in sending His Spirit to quicken me, to regenerate
me, to call me to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and to be with
me all the days of my earthly sojourn, I can say at my death,
I go to my Father's house. That softens this idea of death
for the child of God. Where's the sister gone? Our
Father's house. Our Father's house. And it shows
the love of Christ Jesus. He said, I've gone to prepare
the way for you so that you'll go to the Father's house. What's
the way? He says in verse 14, I am the
way. You want to go to the Father's
house at death? There's one way. This can't be
any clearer. Mary's not the way. Baptism's
not the way. Doing good's not the way. Keeping
the Ten Commandments is not the way. The way is somebody. And what that somebody did to
honor God. Oh, how happy are the Lord's
children in His house. And this is all the result of
the eternal love of the Father and the sacrificial death of
the Son of God. So God says to Zachariah, you
write this and you tell Zerubbabel and Joshua Go build my house. Or I will reveal myself to people
through the sacrifice. Remember, the sacrifices had
ceased. You go build my house. And the very first thing they
rebuilt, you know what it was? The brazen altar. Oh, was that
preacher? Or the sacrifices were offered
to God. All the blood, the blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. Let's sing a closing
song, just one verse of 294.