I hope you’ve noticed that I try to come at preaching from a wide variety of different angles. There are many aims I bring to the preaching task.
Most of the time, of course, I am trying to work with you in seeing in the Scriptures something that will help you live out your daily life in the world. Most of the time I am working with you to find spiritual insights that will make a difference for you out there where it’s tough.
Sometimes, on the other hand, I preach for commitment on the part of those who have not yet made up their mind about the Lord Jesus Christ and about His church. Sometimes I am working to get somebody to say "Yes" to the most important decision they will ever make.
But there are other aims in preaching too. Last week, for example, I let the Scripture speak to us about one of the larger issues, one of the political issues. Just because we do believe in the separation of church and state, that does not mean that we should separate faith and politics. And so sometimes I will preach in order to get you to act or think politically.
But today none of these, really, describes what I am after. Today I want to talk to you, to us, as Takoma Park Baptist Church. Today I want to think with you about what we as a people of God planted in this place need to do together. The Bible speaks to each of us personally, but it also speaks to us as us. It speaks to us together.
This is a sermon meant, then, for Takoma Park believers today, and for what Takoma Park believers can be tomorrow.
Let me first give you in brief the background of the scripture text I am going to read, and then, after I have read it for you, we are going to be blessed as Mr. Stewart Battle presents the text to us in the matchless music of Handel’s Messiah. I believe that hearing these prophetic words that way will communicate to you the power of the Spirit and what the Spirit wants to do in our church.
The background: the year is 520 BC; the setting is Jerusalem, a desolate Jerusalem. Some sixty-six years earlier the tramping armies of Babylon had destroyed the city and had taken into captivity the cream of the crop. All the people who knew how to do anything, all of the leadership, all of the craftsmen, all of the businessmen, all of the statesmen, all the people who knew how to do anything were taken into exile into Babylon.
And, more than that, the city itself was devastated. Its walls were breached, its houses and its public buildings were put to the torch, and, worst of all, its very heart was cut out when the Temple was battered down. The Temple, built more than three hundred years earlier by King Solomon, built as the place where God said He would make His name dwell, built of the finest materials and adorned not only with beauty but also with love and emotion, the Temple was virtually gone. Probably some of its walls remained standing, but it was unusable. The altar of God was defiled. The place of sacrifice was no more. The Temple was no longer a place of beauty filled with the sounds of psalms; now it was a garbage heap, where the only sounds were made by rats scampering through the rubble.
Now, however, the long, sad exile was about to end. Babylon had fallen to the Persians. And under the Persian king Cyrus some of the people of Judah were allowed to return to Jerusalem. Under Darius the First even more came back, filled with hope, planning great things, talking of rebuilding their city, expecting to create a vigorous economy, thinking that they could pick up where their fathers and mothers had left off nearly 70 years before.
Someone, evidently, suggested that it would also be a good idea to rebuild the Temple. After all, the Temple was the center and core of the life of the city. Why not rebuild the Temple? It may have seemed like a good idea to some, but most of the people objected. They said, we are too poor to do that. We don’ t have the resources to build the Temple. Let us take care of first things first: our houses, our fields, our clothing, our jobs. Then, if there is time and money left over, we will think· about a Temple of some kind.
On to that pessimistic scene stepped a prophet named Haggai. We don’t know very much about Haggai, only that while other prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah and the second Isaiah were preaching about the great spiritual and theological issues of the day, Haggai concerned himself with one issue, one problem, and a very practical one. Haggai argued that the Temple had to be rebuilt. Haggai’s message, contained in just four little speeches, was very practical and very immediate. He said: The Temple must be rebuilt, and the Spirit of the Living God will provide the resources with which to do the job.
The Temple of God must be rebuilt as a worthy witness to God’s presence in the city, and the Spirit of the Living God will shake loose the resources needed to accomplish this. That’s Haggai. Let’s hear it in his own words first, and then in the marvelous setting from Messiah:
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A number of years ago my wife and I took a trip to England. She says all I really wanted to do was to hop from one cathedral to another. I saw so many cathedrals that after a while I could not even remember which one I was in. But I was so impressed with these immense monuments of faith. We sat in choir stalls built hundreds of years ago, listening to choristers singing for daily services that had been conducted without interruption for a thousand years. We explored vast spaces where they put the pulpits mounted high up on pillars so that everybody could see and hear. I enjoyed fantasizing about what it would be like to preach at Westminster Abbey or Winchester cathedral. I’ll bet I could sound real convincing if I were eight feet above your heads!
But I think what impressed me most of all about the English cathedrals we saw was their immense size as compared with the tiny villages in which some of them were located. I am quite sure that some of these great cathedral churches could have held every man, woman, child, dog, cat, and stray animal that lived in the town. And if that is true today, how much more true it must have been when the churches were built back in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth centuries. You have to wonder: why so large a church for so small a town, especially when there were other churches in town as well? Why such a huge building when clearly there wasn’t that much need for one?
Well, the answer, of course, is that the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages were not building just for people. They were primarily building for the glory of God. These immense cathedral churches were constructed at great expense and with lavish detail because their builders just plain thought that an infinite God deserved to be honored with the best, the greatest, the most glorious building of which they were capable. And so the great cathedrals, built to honor and glorify God, erected to teach men and women of the majesty of God, made a signpost to heaven itself. They were, in fact, the very center of life in their day.
Now today I invite you to come with me to a very different kind of place: to lower Manhattan, down into the financial district of New York City, and if you will join me on the elevator ride up to the observation level of the World Trade Center towers, we can get quite a perspective on things.
If you look out of the south windows up there more than a hundred stories above the ground level, you will be able to pick out Wall Street, a street whose very name is synonymous with the world of business and selling and trading. The stock exchange buildings, office buildings filled with busy lawyers and frantic brokers: it’s all there. And, in fact, you are standing on much the same thing. The World Trade center towers are jam packed with businesses and money making and wheeling and dealing, and in such huge, monumental buildings.
But keep on looking down at Wall Street, and at the west end of the street you will see the steeple of Trinity Church. Old Trinity Church has served that part of the city for a great many years, and when it was built, its steeple was one of the tallest structures in the neighborhood. Its steeple, like every other church steeple, like the towers of the old cathedrals, was meant not only to point upward to heaven and remind people of God; it was also meant to serve as a kind of landmark. You are supposed to be able to look up from just about any place in the neighborhood and find your way to the church, because its steeple rises up high and stands like a signpost to heaven.
But no more. Not in Wall Street. Not in lower Manhattan. And it is not just that the buildings that business has built are so much bigger and taller than the buildings faith built. It is also that the new buildings are cathedrals too, they are center points for people’s lives. They are cathedrals of commerce, not cathedrals of faith. For many people in our time the center of their lives is not the church but the business world, the world of getting and spending. And so we are more likely to build houses of commerce rather than temples of faith.
But what that tells us is, of course, that the priorities of our lives have been turned around. What that says is that the priorities of life have been invested in business and government, in politics and in sports and in all kinds of things, but that the priorities of our lives in these days are not very much given to faith.
Now that’s exactly what Haggai found among the people of Jerusalem in 520 BC. After nearly seventy years they came home from Babylon and what did they do? They built homes, fine homes. They took care of commerce and agriculture and all the rest, and with what was left over they thought they might, just might, rebuild the Temple. But, they said, it would be done on a modest scale, a small scale, nothing too elaborate, because, after all, they had to take care of business first and see if there was any money left over.
That’s when Haggai the prophet stepped in with a probing question. Haggai asked: "Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?" In other words, you folks hardly even remember when this Temple was the center of life in Jerusalem. You folks were little children or were not even born yet when the Temple was the most significant thing in the lives of people in this city. And so it looks like a big nothing to you right now. And you don’t understand what it could mean to you.
And so Haggai urges them to turn their priorities around and to build this Temple. "Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may appear in my glory, says the Lord." Haggai urges them to reshape their priorities and build this Temple, but then he offers a tremendous word of hope for that enormous task. Listen, and hear this as a word of encouragement for us, because I am about to outline what I believe we need to do here, with this Temple in which we worship:
"Yet now take courage … take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord. Work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. … My Spirit abides among you; fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts."
I want to ask you to pick up on four quick things Haggai reports to us from the mouth of God:
First, as you rebuild the Temple, take courage, for I am with you. You may think this task is huge, but I am on your side, and you will not fail. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t say we can’t. You can. I am with you. Take courage.
Second, work. Just work. I am with you, I will give you strength, but you will have to work. Nothing that is any good springs up out of nowhere. Work.
Third, my Spirit – and this is what God’s Holy Spirit always does, every experience of the Holy Spirit anywhere in the Bible and in Christian history tells us about this – my Spirit will shake heaven and earth, my Spirit will shake all the nations, all the people, and the treasures shall come in. Go on, rebuild the Temple, and you won’t have any money problems, not really, not when the shakedown Spirit gets to work. You think you don’t have the resources, but you do; all you have to do is let my Spirit get hold of you and do some shaking, and the treasure you need will be there. After all, says the Lord of hosts, "The silver is mine and the gold is mine."
And fourth, finally, the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former. It’s going to be even better than it was before. God is saying, I don’t do anything shabby. I am not the God of halfway measures. It will be good. And you will be proud of it.
Friends, I think you know by now where I am going with this. I have delayed a long while before preaching a sermon about this building of ours and what needs to be done with it. Remember that we have voted already to renovate it. We made the decision back in January. I don’t have to persuade you how to vote. We took care of that. But I have waited because I wanted to see how the process would go and, most of all, I wanted to see whether I would feel that the Spirit of the Lord was really in this.
And now I am ready to tell you that I believe that the Spirit is in it. I believe that the shakedown Spirit is about to stir us up about the needs of our Temple. I believe he is going to ask you and me to work again to make this house of faith a cathedral, a Temple, the center of life in this community. I believe that the shaking Spirit is going to move us to turn loose of some of our resources; He is going to ask us to be as faithful in our generation as others were in theirs. And, most important, the Spirit is going to say to us today, do not be afraid. I am with you. I am with you all the way. Take courage. Work. And rebuild.
I cannot spend time this morning on the details of our building and its needs. A report suggesting some things was done in January, and a task force is now hard at work looking at all kinds of options. They are not yet ready to report to you, but they will do so, and you will be asked to approve what they suggest and to get to work on it. I will not get into all the details, but two or three points I do have to make, based on what the Lord says through the prophet Haggai.
First, we need a house of worship that glorifies God. Haggai tells us that the people were told to rebuild the Temple with splendor and glory so that God would take pleasure in it and so that He may appear there in His glory. I think that says that our God wants us to do better than second rate. I believe that that means that our God expects excellence from us in everything we do as a church.
The shakedown Spirit says, you see, that He is going to shake us until the treasures we have come down to Him. I believe that means excellence.
Frankly, I think about this every day. I believe that God expects and that you deserve the best we can give in programming, in education, in teaching, in preaching, in organization, in counseling, in everything that we do. I believe that God wants excellence from us, and that rules out the Salvation Army furniture syndrome. You know what the Salvation Army furniture syndrome is? It’s that attitude that says, well, this old couch is too shabby for my home; let’s give it to the Salvation Army or to the church. The Salvation Army or the church will take our raggedy old stuff, and they have to use it until it falls apart. I wouldn’t have it in my house, but it’s good enough for the church.
No, I don’t believe it is good enough for the church. I believe God wants excellence. And this building, originally built for excellence, has seen the ravages of time. It is no longer up to par. Some of its systems are breaking down; it has grave deficiencies at many points. It does not glorify God as it used to, but we can change that.
Second, we need a house of worship that will serve today’s people and today’s circumstances. We don’t need to stay with yesterday’s ways and yesterday’s styles if we want to reach today’s people.
Haggai heard the people of Judah lamenting that the Temple wasn’t what it used to be. Oh, my, they said, this used to be a lively spot, and everybody came from all around, and this place was full. But we’ll never have that again. But Haggai urged them anyway, go on, build. Work. Work. And the shakedown Spirit will be with you.
I know that some will feel that it is not necessary to build more space. I know that some are not yet excited about making our housing into ministry centers. Some will say, well, there used to be a lot more people in this church than we now have, and we didn’t need parking lots, we didn’t have air conditioning, we didn’t even know how to spell elevators. Some will even say, the glory days of this church are over.
But I say it’s not a question of good days or not such good days. It’s a question of different days. The times are different from what they were seventy years ago, forty years ago, when these buildings were built. Then most people walked to this church; now many come from great distances, and they need to be able to park. Then there were few other churches in this community; now there are thirty Christian churches within a mile of this spot and about seventy-five within a mile and a half. We have to be competitive. We have to offer excellence and quality and convenience. And I don’t think we ought to be ashamed of that at all. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.
Deeper yet, the profound human needs of people are different now. Time was when you opened the doors of the church and could expect a crowd of moms and dads and their kiddoes to flock in and do the church thing. Now we are also looking at folks who are harder to reach and harder to serve. We are looking at single parents and abandoned elderly folks and street people and alcoholics and drug abusers and all kinds of persons with tough needs. These needs take work and facilities and specialized care. That’ s going to be tough, but it’s there, and you cannot ignore it. It means work. But that’s what the shakedown Spirit says, by the way, remember? Work, for I am with you. Work.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a church growth conference, led by Lyle Schaller. Schaller got our attention at the very beginning of the conference with a witty comment, saying that there was a very, very good chance that next year will be 1991. And if it turns out to be 1991, we have a problem, because we’re not ready for 1991. But, of course, if it should just happen to be 1951, we’re prepared for that!
Well, the times have changed and the needs and wants of people have changed, and we have to meet those expectations.
Finally, I want to say that the resources are here to do it. If we really want to do what I am calling for, the resources are here. And if it be God’s will, as I believe it is; if it be good stewardship, good faith to rebuild these facilities so that they are excellent again; if it be right to build new care-taking facilities so that we can help the helpless and restore the brokenhearted; if it be the Spirit’s leadership to rebuild this Temple, then watch out, because the Spirit says, once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land … I will shake all nations, all people, so that the treasure will come in, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts.
Folks, I am not talking about pennies. I am talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars that we will need to raise and pay out over perhaps the next twenty years. But it’s here, it’s already here. It’s in your pockets and mine; it’s in the bank accounts and the real estate we possess; it’s in the hands of those who are going to join us as we grow and develop and reach for Christ. It’s here, and you know what? God says, "The silver is already mine, and the gold is mine". All He is going to do is shake us a bit until it drops down and fills this house with splendor.
Do not be afraid of what I have said. Do not be afraid of what we are going to ask you to do in a few more weeks and months. Do not be afraid; work. Work. Take courage. "For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. My spirit abides among you."
As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, let’s remember that here is the place where His Spirit dwells. Let’s recall how much He was willing to give for us. And let us envision the day not too distant when in this Temple of the Living Spirit, renovated and made to shine with even greater splendor than before, He will shake us down and settle us in and give us great joy and great peace.
