Address—Don Rule
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#13 in the appendix #13 in the appendix. Child of God by God's salvation.
Rise or sin and fear and care. Joy to find in every station Something still to do or bear #13 in the appendix will need a starter.
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Umm.
Right, we're going to fall in.
Valentine's Day, Barclays.
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Ask God's help and blessing.
And to start, would you turn with me, please, to Matthew's Gospel chapter 16?
Help you pay attention. I'm going to read three places to start and when I was your age, that is I'm speaking to you that are young people. I sometimes try to figure what the person was going to talk about by the verses they read. And I'll just tell you ahead of time. All three of these verses have at least one word in common that is before me. So maybe that'll help you pay attention as we read the three verses Matthew chapter 16 or three places.
Matthew, Sector 16.
And uh.
After I find it.
Umm verse 16 Simon Peter answered and said Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood is not revealed unto thee, but my Father, which is in heaven. And I say unto you, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I'll turn over to 1St Corinthians chapter 3.
First Corinthians, chapter 3.
And uh, verse 9.
For we are laborers together with God. Ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building according to the grace of God which is given unto me as a wise master Builder, I have laid the foundation, and another build up thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid which is Jesus Christ.
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And finally, the Book of Jew.
Jude.
Verse 20.
The evil of building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.
Young people, I want to talk to you this afternoon about building.
You're a builder. We're all builders. Our lives are a process of building.
The Bible is full of buildings.
We find all the way back in the beginning of the Bible in Genesis. In chapter 4 it says of one man he went out and built a city.
The Lord Jesus in the 1St place where we read is seen as a builder, He said I will build.
And we all start out as builders. We don't all build physical buildings. That's not what we're gonna talk about, is not the exactly the construction of any physical, not some of our building, a lot of important building in our lives. There's nothing physical in it. When the Lord Jesus said I will build my church, he wasn't building a physical building. He was building the church, the body of Christ.
But we all build and, uh, our lives, our building process.
Keep We read the verse in Jude that says building up yourself or yourselves. There's a certain aspect of building in our lives that has to do with our own character and our own relationship with God, and it needs to be built up.
There is labor as a servant of God, in which we build for God and we.
Do it carefully or not, but we really don't avoid it. I think I know that some are newly married and when we're newly married, we begin building a household together for God, for life. And so we're all in one way or another in the process of building. And I want to talk to you about that process and some of what the word of God.
Helps and teaches us.
But one thing I want to encourage you young people in this and spiritual things is.
There's one foundation to build on.
Just one.
That's gonna last, the Lord Jesus tells us.
I will build my church, and with respect to that in First Corinthians where we read.
It says.
On the foundation, what is it? No other foundation is there but one, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to say to you, everything that you build in your life should have only one foundation.
That foundation, Jesus Christ, every other foundation in which you can build anything in your life won't stand the test.
That's the one and only foundation is Jesus Christ. Other foundation can no man lay when it's in spiritual things than that which is laid. But the wonderful thing about it to me is that foundation was laid 2000 years ago. It's still there and it's just as available to you to build on this afternoon as it was the day it was late. No matter what has happened in the last 2000 years.
Has not taken away from you and I the privilege and responsibility to build and to build on that foundation.
You have as much privilege and in a certain way as to the foundation you have as much opportunity to build for the Lord Jesus Christ and on that foundation as the very first believers on the day the church was formed, on the day of Pentecost. And I think that's very, very important in a day in which we use words like ruin and all those words which are true and have their place. But this afternoon my heart is to encourage you.
To in your privilege and your opportunity and your responsibility, that has not changed from you have as much privilege as Paul had or Peter had in terms of building on that same foundation. And it's just as available to you as it was the day it was formed. OK, with that introduction, go with me to Matthew Chapter 7.
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Lord Jesus is speaking to us, and the Lord Jesus is going to tell us this afternoon through what he says here, some instruction given to you and me in our building process.
Matthew, Chapter 7.
And verse 24 Therefore whosoever here at these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.
And everyone that heareth these words, these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
Here we have a building and we have the Lord Jesus making some some comments to us about our building and he tells us.
The wise man builds his house on a rock. The foolish man builds his house on the sand. When your life is over and or even before it's over, it will be tested by the storms of life. And those storms of life are going to explain.
Explain display to you and perhaps others, what you're building on. What are you building your life on?
What's the foundation on which you're building your life? The Lord Jesus says the wise man builds his house on a rock. The foolish man, he builds his house on sand. And when the the storms of life, if you will, when the tests of life come along, some houses survive and some don't.
I will remember. It's not too important, but I think Bob Tony in this room would remember it maybe. But in the city of San Salvador, El Salvador, there was a re/max or there was a river and it went through the city and there was a brother that we knew who lived right by the river. And so we would go and visit him from year to year.
And when we first started visiting him, we came to this river. It was shallow and it was easy. We just rolled up our pants a little bit, took our shoes off and walked across the river to the house from the one side to the other.
As time passed and the rains came, if you will, the river, uh, got wider and deeper and eventually they put in a bridge that was kind of fun. It was a swinging wooden bridge which had a kind of a cable along the side of it. It would have been a scary thing for a child to go across and, and then, uh, but it anyways, we would go across this swingy bridge couldn't really have two people go in the opposite direction. It was too narrow for that.
And there was only one cord to hang on to anyways.
But as the river got deeper, it also started to eat away at the banks of the shore, and there were some houses on the one side that were right near.
The bank and as those houses were basically built on sand and in the due course of time people had to abandon them and finally you would see part of the structure out over air and the next time you go it was gone. It had fallen into the water. And so it is with life. Those houses represented lives. They started out looking good and they served some people for a period of time. But as time went on and as the river.
Beat on them if you will. It undermined the foundations of the houses and they fell into the the river and the people that had to abandon them.
Don't build a life like that.
That's foolish, isn't it?
Well, how do we build on a rock? The Lord Jesus tells us, look at it, it's very simple and runway and very practical and not under under hard to understand either, he says here.
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Whosoever heareth these things of mine, and doeth them.
That's how to build on the rock.
Listen to the sayings of the Lord Jesus and the Word of God and do it.
And then you're building on a rock.
If you build on any other sayings or any other imaginations or anything else that you choose.
It, to some degree at least, you'll build on sand.
But if you build on the rock solid foundation of what the Word of God says, it will stand every test that you will ever face in your life.
But see how practical it is. Young people, it's practical and some of us are a little older than you have had to go through the experience of failing and learning. It doesn't say the people who hear.
The Lord says you do what you hear.
You can come to a meeting like this and you can listen to a lot of things being said and you can enjoy them.
And you can go home and live without them for a time.
Because you're not doing them. And so here the process of building involves the process of doing, and it's doing what's said.
You have the instruction Book of Life in your hands.
Do it, read it, do it.
It's not adequate. You know, we're all used to doing it the wrong way. I think, I think probably most everybody in this room that's of any age knows what it's like to have gotten something that had some instructions with it. And we ignored the instructions because we thought we knew how to do it and we did it, or we tried to do it and it didn't work. And so the world has its expression. Of all else fails, try reading the directions.
We experienced that, haven't we? We've ignored the instructions and tried our own way and found.
If we're honest, it didn't work. And so here we have this simple, direct, easily understood word from the Lord Jesus to ourselves about our lives this afternoon. He says listen to my word.
Undo it.
And your rice. You're building your life on a rock.
OK, I want to use because I believe it gives us some real benefit and lessons to illustrate to go back to the book of Ezra where they were doing some building and learn what the Lord was teaching them in the process of building. So let's go back to the book of Ezra to chapter one.
Ezra chapter one and verse three. Who is there among you of all his people? Is God. Be with him. Let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the House of the Lord God of Israel. He is the God which is in Jerusalem.
We'll tell enough of the story. I hope that many of you are fairly familiar with it, but.
These people had been taken because of disobedience to God, to a different country to live, some of them as slaves and.
The Lord allowed them to be that collection of people for 70 years outside of their own land.
But when 70 years were up, as God had said he would do, he raised up a Gentile king and put it in that Gentiles King's heart to say I want these people to go back and build.
The House of God in the place that God has set up in the city of Jerusalem.
And so he says that's King Cyrus. He says there to go.
His God shall be with him. Let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the House of the Lord. It starts out pretty humbly. You'd have thought these people would have said, oh, we, we ought to do this and we ought to do that. But they were weak, they were feeble, and God actually used a Gentile king to start the process.
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And not the people.
But it says he said of them, their God would be with them. And that's the first thing that I would say to you. When you build your life on the foundation, you can be sure God will be with you. And if you build it on some other foundation, you're on your own.
There's no God's promise to you that if you build on your own foundation that God will be with you in it. In fact, I think we can say he will not. He may care for you and love you, but He's not going to help you be a builder on a false foundation. But he says to them their God would be with them when they came back to Jerusalem.
Now we're just gonna look at some isolated points through this story and view of the amount of time we're gonna look at it. So we're not gonna take it all up in any detail, but the next place I'd like to look at is verse 7.
Or verse 6.
And all they that were about them strengthened their hands with vessels of gold, and with silver and gold, with goods, and with beasts, and with precious things, besides all that was willingly offered. And Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the House of the Lord which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem, and put them in the House of his gods. Even those did Cyrus the king of Persia bring forth by the hand of.
Miss the treasurer and numbered them unto.
Best baser, the Prince of Judah.
And this is the number of them.
The truth of God is a treasure.
And the individual aspects of that truth of God are like gold and silver and precious stones.
You come to a weekend like this and if you care, if you are diligent, you have the privilege of receiving treasure from God.
You have in the opportunity here this weekend to pick up treasures that are being offered to you from God Himself through His Word, and you can take those treasures of gold and silver and precious stones which are God's truth for you.
Buy from those that, as it says here, that are about you.
And that's the way truth, that's the way treasures are often passed on in spiritual things. One person receives them and enjoys them and shares them. He doesn't lose them, but someone else in sharing them is able to have it as well and pick it up. And so here there were all these things that had been provided for them.
Many, not all, but many of you young people were raised and have been raised and are being raised in a Christian home.
Tremendous provision of God for your well-being.
Your parents Perfect, No.
No parent is.
But the very exposure that you have to the treasures House of God is yours to benefit from.
If you're willing to take it in.
To receive it. And so here they were going to build and they needed material to build with, and it's put right in their hands.
For some, there's a lot of digging to get it out of the earth and there's been a lot of digging to get it. But a lot of it for a lot of you is maybe it's always, not always appreciated because it is so easy in that way, but it is there to be received. But I want to say to you every treasure that God is putting in your hands this day, this weekend.
Is being numbered.
It's being numbered.
God is recording every treasure He's entrusting to you to build with.
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And these people had to take a trip from where they live to where they were going, just like you're taking a trip through life and when you get to the other end of the journey.
Average treasure that was entrusted to you is going to be counted. Did it arrive?
And does it have the same weight?
That means, does it have the same weight, the same value in you as it had when it was given to you?
So they gave an accounting at the other end of every by measure it says, and by weight.
And so you're receiving something to build with in your life in the truth of God, to build you up on your most holy faith so that your character as well as the things that you do, is something that God looks at is pleasing to himself. And it's given. It's recorded by its measure or its number and by its weight, its value.
It's one thing to say I believe the Lord's coming at any time.
That's the treasure really, to have that hope. It's another thing to live by it.
It's another thing to live by it. It's another thing to live your life with that true expectation that is giving it its true weight.
OK.
Let's go over.
To chapter 2.
And verse 68 and some of the chief fathers, when they came to the House of the Lord, which is at Jerusalem, offered freely.
For the House of God to set it up in its place.
They gave after their ability unto the treasure of the work.
Just wanna notice the expression they gave after their ability.
Every single person got something. Some got more than others.
But God only held them responsible for what he gave them.
But he also he gave them all.
It's not going to be acceptable when the day when your house, as you might say on display at the end of your life in the presence of the Lord, it's not going to be acceptable.
To say I I didn't do anything because I didn't have any ability.
If you say that.
You are dishonoring the Lord Jesus.
Because you're saying something that he says is not true.
He says I give to you, I give to everyone of you. I don't give you all the same amount and I don't expect all the same from everyone of you.
I only ask you to do what I give you the ability to do, the capacity to do. We have natural abilities that are given to us of God and can be used in the service of God. We also receive spiritual gifts to be used in the service of God as well. And we all have some of each, and we all have the privilege, the opportunity, whether we use it or not, to present them.
To the Lord, and use them for the Lord, and so they gave after their ability.
I wanna back up. I was meant to comment on it. Umm. So I'm just gonna come back when it says they gave him treasures?
It's important to know what a treasure really is.
And I'm gonna try to illustrate it.
Many of you young people know at least the name of a man named Steve Jobs.
Who recently died?
Steve Jobs was the founder.
One of the two founders of a company known as Apple Computer.
And was the chief really inventor of the iPod and the iPad and so on?
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And he died.
How much treasure?
Is there from his life?
By his own testimony.
At the end of his life he said this.
50% of the time I believe there's a God and 50% of the time I don't.
It's very obvious he didn't live a life in fellowship with God in any stretch of the Word.
And he died.
He died fabulously rich.
And what was his comment about being so rich when he died? He was asked about it, he said.
It doesn't matter who's the richest man in the cemetery.
Doesn't matter who's the richest man in the cemetery.
He obviously.
Said a lot of sad things that man did, so sorry for him and I read some of them.
Someone asked him why he wanted his biography written and he said.
The reason I want my biography written is.
I want my children to know.
Me and why they never saw me.
Is that building?
On the rock? Is that building on sand?
Tremendous inventions.
Considered the greatest inventor.
And designer of technology in the last 100 plus years.
Now is life's over.
Young person.
If you carry away this afternoon, 1 treasure from the word of God that you live out.
You're richer than that, man.
Incomparably richer than that man.
And everything he ever had.
When life is over, it's over.
And suddenly, when that man's life was coming to an end, because he knew it was coming to an end with cancer and he, he reflected on it.
He realized, and he commented, that things just kind of paled into insignificance to him, that it once meant everything to his life.
Take the treasures of God.
That's riches.
That's riches and live it out.
Chapter 3.
And verse.
Three.
Here they come back, they are back in the land of Jerusalem, and they're starting to live their lives there. And it says verse 2 Then stood up Joshua the son of Josadec and his brethren, the priest, and Zerubbabel the son of Sheolatiel and his brethren, and builded the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings thereon, as it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God, verse five. And afterwards they offered the continual burn offering both of the new moons and of all the set feasts.
Or six from the first day of the 7th month began they to offer burnt offerings unto the Lord. But the foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid. They had come back to build the temple, and here they are in the land and they're settling in. If you will. And if I could put it this way, in the matter of building, First things first, you have to start with certain things, and they have to be established first, and then other things come along in their proper order and time.
And here I believe they had from God the right order of things. They they first thing that they established and built was an altar.
An altar speaks to us of fellowship with God.
And the consequent worship of God because of it.
The first thing, young people, that's necessary to do building really after putting one's trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and having him to build on is fellowship with him. Cultivate in your life every day. Work at it. It doesn't just necessarily fall into your lap, if you will.
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Develop a personal fellowship with the Lord Jesus.
And with God the Father.
Right from the early days of your life, you need to have not just somebody you say, Lord help me today and jump up and read one verse and go off to school and thank him when you eat your meal. That's not all that's involved in fellowship. It's a start. It's a place to start. If you haven't done that, start there, but seek to have your altar, if you will, your own personal fellowship with God and if you do.
What will naturally fall flow from it is a thankfulness, a Worshipful spirit in your life. Thank you Lord, Spirit in your daily life. And if you don't have if you don't enjoy.
Thank you, Lord Spirit, in your daily life. Then perhaps you're not spending the time to develop the relationship of the fellowship that goes with it.
So it says that they did these things and they hadn't yet started on the foundation itself of the of the House of God.
Now let's go on all over.
Verse 10 of chapter 3.
And they sang together.
By course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord.
Verse 10 Sorry. And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets.
And the Levites and the sons of ASAP were symbols to praise the Lord after the ordinance of David, King of Israel.
And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, because He is good, and his mercy endureth forever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the House of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men that had seen the 1St house when the foundation of the Lord was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice.
And many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people. For the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off. But just have, really.
One thing I want to bring out of this and young people, your portion is the joy.
Your portion is the joy. There are other older ones in this room whose portion may be the weeping.
But your portion is the joy.
It is a joy.
To every young person who starts out life building on Christ the Rock as the foundation of your life.
There will be, I say guarantee joy to your heart to build on that foundation. There is a collective responsibility that we're not going to try to get into this afternoon that you, as you grow older will perhaps become more conscious of. And you will see failure. And there may come a day if you live long enough to experience the weeping, but.
Take the joy and begin with it and enjoy what God has given to you, which is immense and for you. It's just as much here for you this afternoon as it was on the day of Pentecost in this way.
OK.
Then it says verse 4, now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded, uh, and that so on. And I'm not going to read this chapter in the interest of time, but they start building and immediately there's trouble, people oppose them or say, hey, we want to build with you. And when they say no, they then oppose them.
Yes, you build on the foundation, which is Christ, and you're going to find Satan is there with plenty of things to try to hinder you.
Maybe even forcefully hinder you. There's only one aspect as I see it develop more and more in our culture that I'm going to comment to you on, and that is more and more and more the public testimony of moral character that is governmental actions and public sentiment as to moral behavior is more and more forcibly seeking to undermine.
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Living by the word of God, it's an adversary. Young people don't get your moral standards from public behavior. And if you read a Christian book and it's contrary to the proof of the word of God, rejected.
You need you're gonna have an adversary, and I see it.
Very much in the moral side of it this day and age that will be publicly against living by the truth of God in moral behavior.
Chapter 5.
It says.
Uh, well, verse 24, chapter 4, then cease the work of the House of God. This opposition eventually got to a point where they stopped working. Just like there will be effort made serious effort. You may not always be aware of it to stop you building in your life to, to make your life go on hold, if you will, with respect to your spiritual life and your natural life that flows from it.
And so.
These people, they were actually forcibly stopped from their building. And then the next verse, chapter 5 and verse one says, then the prophet Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Ido prophesied unto the Jews that were in Jerusalem and Judah and Jerusalem in the name of God of Israel, even unto them.
Now notice verse 2. Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of and Joshua the son of Josadec, and began to build.
The House of God. So here we have two prophets of the Bible, Aggie I and Zechariah mentioned to us and it says they prophesied to them, they spoke to them and after they spoke to them they started building again. We don't have time to go all through them, but I want to go to Hagee Eye and pick up four things that Hagee I said to them that helped them start to build again.
So if you can turn with me almost to the end of the Old Testament.
Zephaniah Haggai, Zachariah Malachi. We're going to go to Hagia.
Chapter one. Verse one.
Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts saying this. People say, the time is not come, the time that the Lords house should be built. Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the Prophet, saying, It is time for you, O ye, to that dwell in your sealed houses, and this house. Is it time that you dwell in your sealed houses, and this house lie, wait, waste. Now therefore, saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.
You have so much and bring in little.
Verse 7 thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your way. So this is the first one of four. Consider your ways. We're gonna find that yes, there was opposition and yes, they stopped building, but that's the opposition was allowed of the Lord.
To teach them the necessary lessons about what was going wrong in their lives that was keeping them from having the spiritual energy to be builders. And so the Lord allowed that. The Lord allows difficulties to come into our lives. And if he does go to him and say Lord why? Or maybe you know why and you have to say, Lord help me to deal with this matter in my life. And so here the 1St 3 words that I want you to remember are considered.
Your ways.
Sometimes when something comes up, there's something you have to consider and respond to before the Lord.
I remember one time some years ago I wanted to put an addition on my house and I had to go to the county to get approval, a permit to do it. And I went to the county and with my the plans that her brother had drawn up an architect for me to add to something to my house, a bedroom and a bathroom. And they rejected the plan and I said why? And they told me why. And I said, is there any way around it? Can I do it? And they said yes, you might. You go back to your house and you dig six holes in your.
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Property 3 feet deep and we will come out and fill them with water and then we'll come back in a certain number of hours and see how much the water's gone down. And if the water's gone down the necessary amount you can get the permit. If it hasn't, you don't. So fine. I went dug the three holes. They were to come out like on a Saturday and on Friday night it was second only to the NOAA flood. To me. The sky fell in and the saturated the whole land and there was no way. And they called and said we'll come back in a week.
So we'll reschedule. They also told me at that point that I could dig them anywhere in the yard I wanted. So I thought Oh well the best place in my yard to dig them will be over where we had a little garden because the land is more a little fertile there and it'll make the water drain off better. So that's a smarter idea. So I went and started re digging holes in the garden and I was digging the hole the last one and I was using a post hole digger and I dug down and I saw something and I said oh what's that?
Is it deep enough? And I reached my hand down in there and kind of felt around and I had my hand on the underground power line and.
I stopped.
I went in and I told my wife. The Lord said no.
And we stopped the whole process. The Lord had something to teach me and he brought something into it brought in to stop the process because I needed to learn something. And later on when the Lord's time was right, that everything just went smooth as butter melting and it it was wonderful. And we don't have time for the end of that story. The purse of the words here are consider your ways.
Consider your ways. If the Lord stops you in some process, in the building process, he may want to talk to you and you need to stop and say, Lord, what are you saying to me and why? In this case, they had the wrong priority. They put their own personal houses ahead of the Lord's house. They put their things ahead of the Lord's things. And the Lord said, who's first, you or me?
In this matter, and so they had to consider and if you want to build with God, you learn to learn the lesson that God's matters of God come first and he will take care of your matters. He won't forget your matters, but he wants you to have the right priority. Consider your ways.
Verse 13 then said, Hey, I the Lord's messenger, and the Lord's message unto the people, saying, I am with you.
Saith the Lord.
Consider your ways. I am with you. Oh, that's a wonderful words to keep in your relationship with the Lord. As a builder, you need to learn to enjoy His promise. I am with you. These people were scared. Are you ever scared in the choices of life? Yes, you are. I'm sure you are.
Maybe you want to tell somebody about the Lord Jesus and you're scared.
Heard the other day of a young fellow that works part time at where I work at Bible Truth Publishers and.
He was talking to my wife at lunch one day and he said some young people at the high school were.
Some fellows were asking me and I found out they believed in a different God and so on. And he said to him, well, why don't you try mine?
And in the course of the conversation, he said to her, you know, I think the reason they came to me and asked me is because I have a smile on my face at school. And he said, not very many kids today. I have a smile.
Not very many kids have all that much to smile about, I think, in today's society. But if you have a smile in your heart and in your life, somebody else is going to wonder what it is and perhaps come to you, the Lord's with you.
Enjoy it and take courage from it and build Chapter 2.
And it says umm verse 3.
Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory, and how do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes, in comparison as nothing? Well, that's one way to look at it, isn't it? Everything's gone, everything's nothing. Everything's a mess. Why bother? That's an easy feeling to get. Then it stops building. When we get to that in our lives, we stop building. Maybe when we're older we stop building.
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Here it says, what's the answer to that? It says verse 4 Yet now be strong. Those are of a bull, saith the Lord, And be strong, O Joshua son of Jostedik, the High Street, and be strong all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work.
For I am with you.
That's what I am with, is going to bring strength.
Strength if you have the sense that the Lord is with you, no matter how little it may seem by today's standards of anything.
Be strong and build.
Build.
Still, and so he said, leaders be strong, that that is rubble and so on. And Joshua and all the people, be strong and build. Consider your ways. I am with you.
Be strong and build.
Last one.
Is found in the next in chapter 2.
This is one for the conscience. Verse 13. It says Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, it shall be unclean. And the priest answered and said, It shall be unclean.
Then answered Haggai and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord. And so is every work in their hands, and that which they offer here there is unclean.
And now I pray you consider from this day and onward, from before, a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the Lord.
The Lord had looked at the people and he looked at their ways, and he said they are unclean.
I don't know what your personal private life is like.
Lord does he knows every one of us in this room.
Here he looked at this class of people and he looked at their private lives, if you will, and his collective conclusion was they were an unclean people.
He was telling them to consider their ways.
I want to leave with you these words.
And now I pray you consider from this day an upward or onward.
Your life is what it's been up till today.
But this day in November, in 2011, you have your onward.
If needs be, consider your ways. You can't build.
Satisfactory things for God.
If there's uncleanness.
And so he says, I pray you, please, I beg you, he says to them.
Consider from this day an onward.
There's a verse in the New Testament that says the rest of their lives.
Young people, all of us just have the rest of our lives. And so we want to be, as it says, build yourselves up on your most holy faith.
Your most holy faith.
God's standard for his building is consistency with his own character.
He wants everything we do in our lives to be consistent with.
Himself in his own glory.
So back to.
Ezra.
They listened while we listened. I hope we will hope each one of us this afternoon will listen. And the response in them in chapter 5 and verse two that we already read was after the prophets had spoken. Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Cialatio, and Joshua the son of Josadec, and began to build.
The House of God, which is at Jerusalem. And with them were the prophets of God, helping them, and so on. And so they continued to build.
And, uh, chapter.
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Six, I think it is, yes.
Chapter 6 and verse 14 And the elders of the Jews build it, and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai. They listened. You reread Haggai for yourself and if you want, go on and do Zachariah, which was also involved in it. And Zachariah they heated, they prospered through their preacher, their message to them, and they build it. And what happens? They finished it. They finished it.
May your life.
When it's finished, also be a finished product.
Of that which has honored God.
And if it does, it will also have had in the process, tremendous joy of your own heart for eternity.
So I'll finish with what Nehemiah said to the people later on when they were building the wall, he said. Rise up and build.
Young people rise up and build.
Spray.