What Will It Take To Build This ‘temple?' Series

(Delivered in the year 2001 in some areas of the Middle-East)

Subject: What will it take to build this ‘Temple?’

Complement: This ‘Temple’ will not be built by might, nor by power but by ‘The Spirit of God.’

Idea: It will take ‘The Spirit of God’ to build this ‘Temple.’

Homiletical Idea: This Temple cannot be built by might, nor by power but only by The Spirit of God.

Introduction: How many of us want to be strong for the coming New Year? Our God has always been the God of a new start. I believe it is fitting for every believer to look as his / her accomplishments in the past year and make new goals (rededicating some old ones too) in the New Year. Now is a good time to give the coming year a jump-start. To do much of what we failed to do this past year. Let this new leaf that you turn be everything that God wants you to be! This day I want to challenge you all for something that you may have never ever thought about nor even pursued to do. A challenge that the world today doesn’t want to accept. Something, which God has been laying upon my heart for quite some time. In this coming year 2006, how many of us want to stutter … limp … have an infirmity (s) in our lives – I believe no one. But I have faith that after today’s Word there will be some of you who would yield to this challenge.

God’s Temple must be built and sustained, not by wealth, nor by its members, nor by virtue, nor by sheer strength, but by My Spirit says the Lord. And you are that temple as proclaimed in 1 Corinthians 3: 16, 17.

But how do we go about this whole idea of building this temple by the Spirit of God?

‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of Hosts.

Do you want to begin this year in your might or in some human power or in The Spirit of God?

God will not do His work by any human might, power or endeavor, but only by His Own Spirit. What is done and achieved by His Spirit cannot be matched by any might or power available from anywhere. This stands in opposition to the visible forces.

When instruments / vessels fail, let us therefore leave it to God to do His work Himself and by His Own Spirit. All of us have some sort of physical / emotional / spiritual weaknesses and we are always trying to hide it from one another. If God wants to get things done through you – you just can’t escape! God will not even permit you to be killed, till His assignment is completed through you. If you don’t believe me ask Jonah.

God has given us great examples from His Word. We’ll look at about three of them.

If you think you are a great talker, you can’t speak for the Lord. You will need to learn to stutter / stammer.

(1) MOSES: (Exodus 4: 10 – 15) He was slow in speech and not eloquent.

God called Moses to redeem the Israelites only after he had the desert experienced for 40 years. Moses told God that He was making a wrong choice as he couldn’t speak and the right choice (advising God) would be Aaron because he could be a great talker.

God doesn’t choose and build people just because they can talk because when they talk, GOD CAN”T. He has to remain silent. God’s choices are overtly mind blowing – they are out of the world, something we as humans can’t easily comprehend. God chooses those who just can’t make it to the next word - those who stutter and have a hard time articulating. This He does, so that He can speak through them. Those who would depend on God completely to speak through them rather than using their natural ability to be great talkers.

Till Moses died, he used to be a natural stutterer. (There is no evidence in ‘The Bible’ where God healed Moses completely from his stammer.) We needn’t forget that to stammer is counted as a weakness in the world today.

When God speaks through us, we don’t stutter (because He is a God who doesn’t stutter). Everything just flows fluently.

Today God seeks to build people who can stutter – who just can’t talk without His help. Because then He can speak through them. If you are a great talker, ask God for that stutter so that you would learn to depend on him completely and He could use you as an instrument to speak to His people.

Even in that stammer, Moses was willing to trust God and not depend on any human might or power to achieve what God had assigned Him to do. Thus he learnt early Philippians 4: 13 ‘I can do all things …………..’