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BUILDING UP THE TEMPLE OF THE LORD
By Henry Jaegers
For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. (Romans 15:4)
This morning, I am venturing forth into a new subject of which I am merely a novice in the realm of my understanding. I have been a Christian for over 60 years and I must confess that I have been baffled over what God has done in the past and what he is doing today.
When I was a child, for some strange reason, perhaps because of most of my relatives were salvationists, (a name that Salvation Army people called themselves), that I found myself attending Salvation Army meetings on Sunday afternoons. Looking back, I can see that God was beginning to lay some important foundations in my life which, at that time, I had no idea of what God was beginning to do. Although some things in the Salvation Army left me somewhat confused as to how often I needed to be saved, I do remember some things that I'm thankful for and things that I have never forgotten.
You may wonder how the title of this message and the verses I am using have anything to do with what I am about to share with you. I remember songs I learned in the Salvation Army meetings that just came to my mind recently. Here are the words of one of them:
"building up the temple, building up the temple,
building up the temple of the Lord.
Say, Sister, won't you help us, brother, won't you help us,
building up the temple of the Lord."
I am sure that you are beginning to see where I am going with this message. As a child, those words meant very little, but lately as I have been studying carefully in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the books written after the captivity of Israel, I see God doing the work in the same manner as He seeks to do in me. When I wrote my commentary on Daniel, I gave it the title "Out of Babylon", because it was while Daniel was in Babylon these experiences took place in his life. But as I have been studying through the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and the prophecies that accompany them, I am tempted to write another book called "After Babylon". I don't know if I will ever write such a book. Perhaps, maybe these writings I am putting together today are the beginnings of that adventure. I do not know but what I do understand is that God is building a message in me so that I may have a testimony of the living experience about God's working in my life.
Let me say first of all, that I do not intend to hold up my life as a role model for anyone. I know, and God knows that on my own and without the working of his Holy Spirit, I have nothing to offer anyone. Since God is a living force in my life, I am compelled to speak forth that which he is teaching me for me to “build up the temple of the Lord”. The temple of the Lord is not the Old Testament structure found in Ezra and Nehemiah. These books explained a new beginning that God was doing in the life of his people compared to the old-life of the past. We might say the life of Israel, up until Babylon was “the life in the flesh” but after Babylon, a new life began with newer understanding and a greater purpose that God had in mind.
When I think of that little song, I learned at the Salvation Army, I can see the depths in the message that this song conveys. When it says, “brother won’t you help us, sister won’t you help us?” It means that God uses people, the saved and unsaved alike, to teach us how to live the Christian life and how important each one plays, in our Spiritual development.
As you can see, I am just getting started to share with you some wonderful things that God is doing in my life. For now, I want to use this brief introductory part of what I want to say to share with you the subject of"building up the temple: how God is doing it and how well that we are we co-operating in it's completion”.
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