-Building a house is an impossible task
-We’ve had two homes built for us while we were in Iowa
-Both of them were horrific messes
-We wanted the white package with the first home – it was a spec that we added a few upgrades to
-They probably called us a dozen times to make sure that we indeed wanted white handrails
-They tried and tried to talk us out of white handrails until we insisted
-Then I tackled finishing 800 sq ft of the basement
-Since it was my very first major project, I enlisted the help of a contractor friend of ours
-He walked and talked me through the task
-I learned a lot about how and how not to do construction
-That was helpful for our custom house from Hades that we had built next
-Nothing went right
-We got call after call about how things were getting messed up
-Linda got a call one day from the cabinet guy who said that the entire house plan was backwards
-She raced out to the job site to find out that we was working off the old plans
-The foundation ended up costing $10,000 more than estimated
-The septic system cost $10,000 more than estimated
-It was one thing after another
-Linda never, ever wants to build another custom house
-Building a house is a very difficult task but that is what King David wanted to do for God {PAUSE}
-You see, David had been fighting to establish his kingdom for a long tim
-He had been anointed as king as a young boy after God rejected King Saul for not obeying His commands
-For Saul was instructed to make war against one of the enemies of Israel, the Amalekites and destroy everyone and everything
-Instead, Saul captured the king and allowed his men to seize the best livestock for themselves
-So God sent the priest, Samuel, to anoint David, one of the sons of Jesse, to be king over Israel
-Now it would be many years before David would indeed ascend to the throne
-He would finally rout the Jebusites and take over their fortress at Jerusalem and make it the city of David
-With the fortress as his lair, David had a wonderful jumping off point in order to finally destroy the Philistines
-With safety from his enemies on every side provided by God, David went about improving his situation
-As he took up residence in the palace, apparently his conscience began to bother him as he compared his living arrangements with the space that the ark of the covenant occupied
-He began to ask himself, “Why am I living in a palace when God is living in a tent?” {PAUSE}
-There is a song that came out a few years ago performed by the group Tree63 entitled, “Look what you’ve done for me”
-The lyrics go like this:
Look what you’ve done for me,
Your blood has set me free
Jesus my Lord, look what you’ve done for me
I haven’t been the same, since that day I called your name
Yahweh, Yahweh, look what you’ve done for me
Chorus:
What can I do for you my Lord
I want you to know my heart is yours
It’s not a question of what you can do for me
But what can I do for you my Lord?
-That really reflects the same attitude as King David
-It is supposed to be an attitude of servitude to God
-Could that possibly be a bad thing?
-Well, amazingly it could be {PAUSE}
-There was a time in my life after God helped me to take my life a little more seriously and helped me to appreciate all that He had done for me in my baptism.
-At that point I started looking really hard at what the Bible said about Christian living
-I went about trying to live a holy life
-I was really hard on myself when I messed up and was probably even harder on the people around me, Christian and non-Christian alike
-I wasn’t having much fun being a Christian and I probably wasn’t that much fun to be around either
-Essentially what I was trying to do was to earn God’s favor after the fact or to pay God back for all that He had done for me
-It’s called Pietism
-It’s essentially the same thing that Jesus faced among the Pharisees of His day
-They tried to merit their own salvation by doing “good” deeds instead of depending solely on the amazing grace of God
-I was trying to be helpful to God but in doing so I was not be helpful at all
-It’s a little like Marie and Frank Barone on the show “Everybody Loves Raymond”
-I remember one episode where Ray and Debra decided to try to “pay back” Marie and Frank for all of their “good” deeds for them
-Ray tried to fix the refrigerator door which fell off when Frank tried to open it
-Debra tried to do the laundry and washed whites and reds together on hot
-Marie and Frank always poke their noses in Ray and Debra’s business, trying to be helpful but end of not be helpful at all because their motivation is all wrong
-They want everyone to do things the way that they do them
-So really it’s about control and not about love
-Do we do the same thing from time to time?
-We look at our situation and see all the ways that God has blessed us and wonder what have I done for God lately
-We try to help people to live more Godly lives but it’s really about control and our rules than about love and God’s rules
-We try to build up God’s house by our own efforts {PAUSE}
-Instead, God says that He wanted to build a house for David
-He promised David in verse 12, “When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”
-In fact, it would be King Solomon who would be charged with building a temple for God
-But one greater than David or Solomon would come
-One of whom King David would say in Psalms 110, “The LORD says to my Lord:
‘Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet‘”.
-Jesus uses this passage to demonstrate to the religious leaders of His day that He is the one greater than David, whose kingdom would be established forever {PAUSE}
-According to John’s gospel when was it that Jesus’ was glorified
-Was it at His birth, His baptism, His first miracle, His transfiguration, His resurrection or His ascension?
-According to John’s gospel, It was when Jesus had a crown of thorns placed on His head and a purple robe placed on His back and a scepter in His hand as the soldiers mocked Him and when He was nailed to the cross with the signage declaring Him to be the King of the Jews that He was truly glorified
-In John 12, “Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’”
-By Jesus’ death, He became the King of the Universe
-His throne was established forever
-Now, we simply wait for the last enemy of ours, death, to be fully overcome
-But just as Christ was raised to new life through His resurrection, so will we be raised to life everlasting when Jesus comes back again
-Now that our sins of pietism and willfulness have been paid for God doesn’t want us to strike out on our own but to see where He is working and to join Him in what He’s accomplishing
-We need to stop trying to be good builders of the kingdom but simply be residents of the house that God has and is building for us
-Trust me, you’ll have a lot more fun and you’ll be more effective for Jesus’ sake
-Come and enjoy the house that God has built
