Let's go back to that passage
that was read to us, which was Ephesians chapter 2.
And I just want to draw your attention to a few words, and
then I'm going to go back to the book of Zechariah. Ephesians
chapter 2, if you close your Bible and you don't remember
where we read from, just go back to Ephesians chapter 2. And I
just want to notice, Ron read to us, of course, these verses.
But I want you to notice the last two verses of Ephesians
chapter two, okay? He's speaking about a building. But he isn't talking about an
earthly building like this building. And he's not talking about the,
the temple in Jerusalem, that was a literal building. He's
speaking about a spiritual building. A spiritual building, a spiritual
house that isn't made with hands, it's made by God. And he has
this to say, are you back there now? Ephesians 2, 21. That is, in Christ Jesus, all
the building fitly framed together groweth, watch this, into a holy
temple in the Lord. Not a physical temple now, but
it is a holy temple. You notice in the 22nd verse,
in whom? In Christ. Now learn this lesson
and you'll be better off for having remembered this and you'll
know more really than most people in religion know. Every blessing
God has for folks like us, every blessing is to be found in Christ
Jesus. That's the reason throughout,
especially the book of Ephesians, but other books as well, you'll
often read the words in him or in whom, meaning in Christ Jesus. Every good thing God's got for
folks like us is to be found in Christ Jesus, not anywhere
else, not in anybody else. But in Christ, so he says, in
whom ye also, and he's writing to the Ephesian people, these
were Gentiles. These are not Jews. Earlier in
his reading, he read the word uncircumcision. That's who he's
talking about. When he used the word uncircumcision,
he's talking about the Gentiles. And when he used the word circumcision,
he's talking about the Jews. And he says, in Christ Jesus,
both Jews and Gentiles, that is the circumcision and the uncircumcision,
were all made one in Christ Jesus, watch it, in whom ye also are
builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. This habitation of God is a spiritual
temple. It's a spiritual house. It isn't
made up of bricks and mortar and wood and nails and so forth
and so on like this building is. It's a spiritual building. brought together Jews and Gentiles,
male and female, young and old, all sorts of ages, all sorts
of people. These are people who are drawn
together by God's grace and they're taught by the Spirit of God that
life, everlasting life, is to be found in Christ Jesus. He
came into this world. He laid down His life in order
to save sinners. He redeemed His people by His
blood, and having done the work that God gave Him to do, He went
back to glory. He's the ever-living Savior,
and He sent His Spirit, and His Spirit is the one who teaches
us of the spirituality of this building, that is, this temple
of God, made up of people just like us. Now with those introductory
remarks, go back to the book of Zechariah. And if you have
difficulty finding the book of Zechariah, just go to where the
New Testament and the Old Testament come together, right there. After
the 39 books of the Old Testament and before the 27 books of the
New Testament, the last book of the Old Testament is Malachi.
And before that is the book of Zechariah. Zechariah chapter
4. And let me tell you what's going
on. We're in the book of Zechariah chapter 4. The Lord, because
of their sinfulness, the Lord sent Israel into captivity in
Babylon. Babylon. You remember Nebuchadnezzar? You remember Belshazzar? Well,
the Jews were in captivity to Babylon. And then the Babylonians,
they were overwhelmed and overthrown by the Medes. And then a king
came along by the name of King Cyrus, Cyrus the Great. And he
conquered the Medes and other countries as well to make the
Medo-Persian Empire. This man Cyrus, very powerful
man. Well, when he took office, he found that the Babylonians
had kept in the captivity the Jews. And here they were, a group
of people, a vast number of people, thousands by now, had been there
many years in Babylon. And as I shall show you in a
little bit, this man Cyrus, God moved upon his heart to send
them back to their homeland, back to Israel. You with me so
far? Okay, back to Israel. and to
rebuild the walls and the city of Jerusalem that had been destroyed
when Nebuchadnezzar went in and invaded. And then to rebuild that temple
known previously as Solomon's Temple. Now they tore it all
to pieces. The Babylonians, the Assyrians,
they tore it all to pieces in destroying Jerusalem. So it's
got to be built from the ground up. It's the temple. And of course, that's where the
Jews worshipped. And so a bunch of them were released
to go back. With this edict, with this command
from Cyrus, you go back and you rebuild the temple, and you start
worshiping your God, and as we shall see in a few minutes, He
said, He is God. You go back and worship your
God, you build the temple, and then you start offering your
sacrifices to God once again, worshiping God. Now, we know
that the Lord back in the Old Testament He was worshipped by
blood sacrifices. These were animals that had to
be killed. So why did God insist upon that? Well, that's on account of the
seriousness of sin. And it deserves, and God demands,
death for sin. Death for sin. Now God, before
he ever made the world ordained, he's going to send the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, our Savior, going to send him into the world.
And he's going to do that in order to save a people that God
had chosen before the world began. And the only way they could be
saved, the only way we could be saved, is that somebody had
to die for our sins. Because that's what the justice
of God demanded. And so Christ Jesus came into
the world. And He was the perfect man. And
then at age 33, 34, right around that area, He died. Why did he die? He died in order
that God would remain just and holy and righteous in all of
his ways, and yet through that death, he would satisfy God to
such an extent that God then could save folks, and he did
save folks like you and me, that is, everybody Christ died for. That's why Christ came. And here's
what the Lord is doing today, and He's been doing this really
ever since Adam. He's building a spiritual temple. That's what He's doing, a temple
of God. As we read there, Ron read it
and then I read it to you again, it's called a habitation of God, a spiritual temple. So this rebuilding
of the temple in Jerusalem that King Cyrus commanded to be done,
and by the way, he provided for everything. He provided the money. He even told him, he said, all
those vessels that Nebuchadnezzar stole out of the other temple
that was destroyed, He told Zerubbabel, who led the wave of people that
left Babylon and went to Jerusalem, he told them, you take all those
vessels with you. And you start worshiping God
again by means of a blood sacrifice. And now we know, if we had any
doubt before, all of them pointed to that one sacrifice for sin
that God would offer himself, the sacrifice of his son. That's
the only way we could be saved. Understand? That's the only way
justice could be satisfied. So he said, start building that
wall, start building that temple again. And they did, they started
off by building the brazen altar. That's where the animals were
killed. That's where they were sacrificed. But then the builders got discouraged. There was opposition from without.
Some folks came in, started mocking them, what they were doing, and
then There was discouragement within their own hearts, and
they stopped building. They stopped building. And so the Lord raised up this
man, Zechariah, and another man as well, and that man was Haggai,
the previous book in the Old Testament. Haggai and then Zechariah.
He raised up these two men, to go forth and preach to the Jewish
people saying, we need to get busy rebuilding this temple. We need to resume worshiping
God. And really, the first six chapters
of the book of Zechariah are all about the Lord appearing
to Zechariah in visions encouraging him to speak to the people who
were downtrodden, disappointed, that got opposition without.
Here are a bunch of people out here, the Samaritans for one
group, saying, hey, we'll help you. And the Jews said, no, we
don't want any help. This is the temple of God. This is where God's going to
be worshipped. And others were opposing it as well. We don't
want it to be built. And then the builders, they became
dejected, disappointed, down in their spirits. They stopped. Along comes Zechariah and Haggai
and said, let's get with it. We've got to get busy here. Gotta
get busy rebuilding this temple. You see, everything now is at
a standstill. The people were dejected, they
were discouraged, and they were disappointed. But God had purposed
that this work be continued and finished. And He's gonna have
it done. Now, He's gonna use some men.
He's going to use some men. One of them is Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel
was the one who led the first wave of released captives into
Jerusalem. You might think of Zerubbabel
as not only the leader, but he's the king. He's the man in charge. Another man, of course, that
God used was Zechariah. He is the prophet of God. We've
talked about His name. Jehovah remembers. The Lord remembered
His people. He never forgets His people.
He saw them in their bondage, a bondage which they deserved
in Babylon. But the Lord would not forsake
His true people. So He raised up King Cyrus, who
released them and said, go back and worship God. So the Lord,
He's used Cyrus, He's using Zerubbabel, He used another man who's a high
priest, that's Joshua. What was the job of a high priest? Two things. Offer sacrifices
to God, and then intercede for the people,
that is pray for the people. The Lord used Zerubbabel, He
used Zechariah, before that He used Cyrus, He used Zerubbabel,
He used Zechariah, He used Joshua, and yet we are reminded here
in chapter 4, and this is what I want to drive home this morning.
The work of rebuilding the temple was not really dependent upon
any of those men. Notice with me, I got one verse
for you. In verse 6. Zechariah 4 and verse
6. So now you know what it's all
about. It's all about encouraging the people, let's rebuild the
temple, let's resume the worship of God. And he uses people. He used Cyrus. He used Zerubbabel
to lead them out. He used Joshua the high priest.
And now he's using Zechariah to preach to them. But know this. The work is not dependent upon
any one man or all men put together. So get this, and here's my subject
today, this morning. How God builds his church. Look at verse six. Then this angel who talked with
him spake unto me, Zechariah saying, this is the word of the
Lord unto Zerubbabel. Now we know who he is now. He's
like the king, he's the leader. his name, the root of it, Zerubbabel,
he was born in Babylon. And here's the word of the Lord
unto Zerubbabel saying, Not by might, not by power, not by you men,
but by my Spirit, saith the Lord. I'll get this temple built, God
says. But it won't be by your might,
and it will be by your power. It will be by my spirit, saith
the Lord. And the house was rebuilt. Now let me, go with me over to
the book of Ezra. Can you find the book of Ezra?
Ezra chapter one. Go to Ezra chapter one. Let me read the first four verses.
Now let me tell you about the first man God uses. Ezra chapter 1 and verse 1. Ezra 1 verse 1. Now in the first
year of Cyrus, king of Persia, we already know who he is, right?
We got introduced to him just a couple of minutes ago. You're
pretty good friends with him by now, aren't you? You know
him. You know Cyrus. We know who's Cyrus. Cyrus the
Great. You can study about him in the encyclopedia or look him
up on Google and find out a lot about Cyrus the Great. Now in
the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the
Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, Jeremiah
prophesied this, The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king
of Persia. Who did this? Here's a heathen
king. And all of a sudden, he has this
urge, this inner feeling to do something with these people who
had been held captive for a long time. Now he was, to a degree, he was
acquainted with them and he was acquainted with their beliefs
because he had been around them. The Lord stirred up His Spirit.
Let me tell you something. This is what has got to happen
if you're ever to become truly interested in the Gospel and
interested in Christ Jesus and His bloody sacrifice for sin. The Spirit of God has got to
stir up your spirit. He's got to stir up your heart.
He's got to do something for you on the inside. Let me tell
you something. Salvation is not about raising
the hand. It's got nothing to do with it.
Salvation's not about walking an aisle. Salvation's about God Almighty
by His Spirit through the preaching of the word of Christ Jesus such
as you're hearing right now. God takes that word and He works
in your heart and He gets your interest. I hope He's got your
interest. You see, you can't become interested
on your own. It takes the Spirit of God, the
Spirit of Christ Jesus, to stir you, to trouble you. And so, this is what happened
to Cyrus, rest of verse one, that he made a proclamation throughout
all his kingdom, and it was a big kingdom. And he put it in writing. Say, thus saith Cyrus, king of
Persia, the Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms
of the earth, and he hath charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem,
which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all
of his people? His God be with him, and let
him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house
of the Lord God of Israel. Quotation, or parentheses, He
is the God. Oh, this man's been taught. He is by nature, understand,
an idolater. He's a worshiper of false gods. But now, He makes it very clear
in His law that went out throughout all of the kingdom. The God of Israel, He's the only
God there is. And I'm telling you, there's
just one God who has revealed Himself one way, in one person,
the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. There's one God and one mediator
between God, the God, the holy God, the righteous God, the just
God. Between the God, one God, and
one mediator. Who's that? Somebody who is in
between me and God. Somebody who stands in between
us. Somebody who can deal with God
in the purity of His holiness. You can't do that. I can't do
that. And somebody who will represent
me, a sinful man. You've heard people say before,
you just need to make your peace with God. My question is, how
in the world are you going to do that? when you can't even
draw near to God. God is a consuming fire. How
you gonna make peace with God? That's really, I hope you never
say that. And if anybody says that to you,
well, have you made your peace with God? Say, I can't do that.
I need somebody to make peace with God for me. Who is the peacemaker? That's Christ Jesus. He is our
peace. He made peace for the blood of
His cross. I need this one, Christ Jesus,
to stand between me, a sinful man, a man who's undeserving
of the least of God's mercies, stand between me and a holy God. I need a mediator. I need somebody
to stand between me and God, because He is the God. He's the God who's so holy, He
charges His angels with folly. He's so holy, the Bible says
the heavens aren't even pure in His sight. He's so holy that when His only
begotten Son took all of the sins of all of
His people upon Himself. When He was charged with all
of our guilt, God couldn't even look on Him. And God therefore
had to deal with Him in the severest way possible. What does that
mean? Death. And God dealt with His soul God
whipped his soul by his stripes were healed. It wasn't just what
the Roman soldiers did to our Lord that was the agonies of
the cross of Calvary. It's what God did to him. God dealt with him. in such a
fashion that in those few hours upon the cross of Calvary, those
three hours of utter darkness, He poured on His Son all of the
wrath, all of the judgment, all of the fury, all of the vengeance
that God had in His arsenal against sin. Until finally, the arsenal
against the sins of God's people was exhausted. It was emptied. And you know what Christ said?
It is finished. It's done. What was done? He saved His people from their
sins. He satisfied God. He is the God
who's satisfied due to the sacrifice of Christ. Now look at verse
four. So he is the God, this is his temple. to be built, which
is in Jerusalem. Verse four, and whosoever remaineth
in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help
him with silver and with gold and with goods and with beasts
beside the freewill offerings for the house of God that is
in Jerusalem. And so they start going back. And Zerubbabel says, let's go.
How many of you with me? Now, they'd been there a long
time, and some of them had businesses. Some of them had married with
the Medes or the Persians or Babylonians. They got a family
there now. So all of them didn't go, but
a bunch of them did go. And they went back to Jerusalem,
and they started building the temple. And it got just so far, and then
they got discouraged, and the work stopped. The opposition came from without, and it comes from within. Let
me tell you what we're doing here. In a spiritual way now. I'm not talking physical building. We've got a nice physical building.
We've got a nice comfortable building. But we're involved
in building the house of God. That is, preaching the gospel.
Now, I say we're involved. God does use people. But it isn't
by our might. And it isn't by our power. It's
by His Spirit. Now see, a lot of people today,
they really don't understand that, they don't believe that.
And so they're trying to build churches in the strength of the
flesh. I wonder if, kind of let my imagination
go a little bit here. I wonder if when they were rebuilding
the temple in Jerusalem, I wonder if somebody didn't say to Zerubbabel,
you know, maybe we ought to cut some corners here. Maybe we ought
to go easy on, especially these folks who said they want to help
us. I know they don't worship God like we do, the Samaritans. I know they don't believe the
gospel like we do, but, you know, we could use some help and we
get this thing done faster. and quicker. Well, what do we got to do? Well,
compromise what we've been instructed to do. And I'll tell you what
a lot of churches have done. They compromise the way that
the kingdom is to be built, which is through the preaching of the
word by the power of the Holy Spirit. Got that? I know God
uses men. He raises up men and then He
takes them away. Because the work of building
the kingdom of God, building the church, the true temple of
God, that's not our work, really. We're involved in it and I'm
thankful to have my part in this in preaching the gospel. But
know this, I really don't build the church at all. And neither
do you. I said we're building in a sense.
I know preaching the gospel is important. But it's the Lord
who teaches people the gospel. It's the Lord who stirs the heart. It's like He stirred the heart
of Cyrus. And people today, they compromise. Years ago, tell you a true story,
years ago, and I won't tell you the city I was in, even though
it was a long time ago, but I was invited to preach in a certain
church, and I had gone to school, gone to Bible college with the
man who was pastoring then. He called me and said, hey Jim,
would you come preach for me? And I said, yeah, I'd be glad
to. So I went down and preached, and first night, and I love Ephesians
chapter one, I was preaching from Ephesians chapter one. God's
predestination, God's election, the redemption that's in Christ
Jesus, which results in the forgiveness of sins, the work of the Spirit
of God, all to the praise of the glory of God's grace, and
that's what I preached. After the service, we went back
to his house, I don't know, got some peanut butter crackers or
whatever we had to snack on after the service. And he said, you
know, Jim, he said, I try not to use those offensive words.
I said, I didn't know I used offensive words. He said, I don't
use the word predestination. I don't use the word election.
He said, I just stay away from those things because it angers
some people, and all I do, I don't preach that Christ only died
for his people, he only died for the elect. I just say Christ
died for sinners. He said, I think it's better
to approach it in a general way. And I said, but if it says predestination
in the Bible, isn't it okay to say predestination from the pulpit? And if it says redemption in
the Bible, isn't it okay to say redemption from the pulpit? He
said, I think we need to go easy. And I told him this. I said,
let me tell you something. One of these days, you're going
to either die in office or God's going to lead you somewhere else.
And you will not have, and I said, It's a good word that you need
to learn here. You will not have indoctrinated
the people. You will not have taught them
true biblical doctrine. And therefore, somebody else
will come in and they'll say, well, I believe Christ died for
sinners. But they don't believe it the
way I believe it and the way the scripture teaches it. And
I said, first thing you know, this church that you think believes
grace, it'll just turn over. Because you've avoided using
words that are in the Bible, doctrines that are in the Bible,
that you consider to be too offensive to preach. Let me tell you something,
Paul said this. He said, I preach the gospel
though it is offensive to men. He said, why am I being persecuted
if I've taken the offense away? Listen, we're not going to compromise
the message. I'm telling you right now, God
has a chosen people. Before the foundation of the
world, He chose them in Christ Jesus. This is a chosen church. Christ Jesus saved those people
by His shedding of His blood to His death upon the cross of
Calvary. This is a redeemed church. The
Spirit of God calls sinners by the Gospel, just like it says
in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 2 that the church at Corinth
was called and sanctified. God calls by His effectual call. Through the preaching of the
Gospel, God does the work in the heart. It's not you who decided. It's not you who, well, you came
to this conclusion. You know, I think I ought to
go ahead and give God a nod, and I'll just say yes to Jesus. Say yes to Jesus. He will work
in your heart, creating true faith and repentance. And you
will find yourself suddenly, mysteriously, miraculously believing
on Christ Jesus to the salvation of your soul. And if that's offensive to you,
I'm not going to apologize. I'm going to pray for you. Because
this is for the glory of God. Others compromise the music. If you don't compromise the music,
let's get a little more hip in here. I preached up in Michigan. I
was invited to preach somewhere. And the song leader had a tambourine. He just doing this, you know. Back behind him were, and I don't
mind guitars that are played respectfully and solemnly and
reverently, drums, cymbals, and he's on his tambourine. That's
what we need, Jim. And we need more contemporary
music. See, this is what a lot of people
are doing today. That's how we'll build the kingdom.
We'll build the church. Well, that will get a lot of
people in. That's for sure. Or let's go to contemporary dress. Yeah, you see on the church side,
There's a church I'm thinking about in a local community. It
says contemporary service at one time and then traditional
service at another. You know what? Contemporary service
means come any way you want to. It don't matter. Preacher doesn't
have a tie on, probably got a golf shirt on, pair of khakis. He's
not dressed. He's not dressed as if he's gonna
meet God, as if he's gonna deal with God. And nobody else is
either. Let's be careful we don't get
too lax, not on the doctrine, not on the music, not on the
dress. We're coming in here to worship God. We're not coming
in here like, okay, I've been working in the garden and I'll
just, maybe I'll wash my hands if I have a chance. We're coming
in here to worship God. He demands respect. I'm not saying
he'd wear a tie. I told somebody the other day,
I said, asked me about women wearing dresses and skirts and
so forth. And I said, well, if women are
supposed to wear dresses and skirts, men ought to be required
to wear neckties. Whoa. That don't get any amens. But I'm saying dress like you're
coming to meet with the king because you are. But see, that's compromise. We'll get things built quicker.
Jim, you'd have more people in here if you'd do things the way
you've been talking about. You've been talking against all
the right things to do if you want to build up the work. Yeah, we want to build up the
work, but God's not going to honor that. Know this, not by
might, not by power, not by our ingenuity, not by us being clever, not by us trying to take the
offense of the cross away. God's not going to use those
things. Oh, you can get numbers. There are mega churches out here,
and we don't even register on the church radar. We're not even
a blimp on the screen hardly. But here's the problem. They
don't worship the God who is the God. That's the issue. That's why I think Cyrus was
converted. He's the God! And in this place,
we believe and we preach by the grace of God that the God of
glory, he's the God. There is no other. and you'll
worship Him one way, through Christ Jesus, the Lord of glory,
and His substitutionary sacrificial death that honored God and saved
His people, you'll worship God through Christ Jesus by the power
of the Spirit, or you'll perish in your sins. That's not too
tough for you, is it? That's just, I'm trying to be
honest with you. Trying to be truthful with you. Well, I've said my piece. I hope
that God will take the word of God and do what he did to the
heart of Cyrus. Stir your spirit. Wouldn't that
be something? I can't stir it. But I'll tell
you what he can. Maybe he will. Let's sing a closing
song.