Note: Transcriptions are done by software. Errors may occur.
Living Stones | David Fisher
Great, great, great. Last week, we talked about, really read from 1 Corinthians 3rd chapter, says, do you not know that you’re the temple of God and the spirit of God dwells in you? And it was really a message about calling us back to holiness. That it doesn’t matter if we spend all of our time having our worship experience, but it doesn’t follow up then with holiness in our lives, then we just kind of ruin it.
I mean, it just kind of messes it all up. And so I want us to go over to 1 Peter, the second chapter. I do have some slides on this.
Y’all remember last week, we talked about holiness and Peter talked about that. In fact, he quoted the Old Testament from Leviticus, the law of Moses that said, be holy for I am holy. And I mean, in all of our conduct, there’s this expectation that God wants us to be holy in what we do and what we say and how we go about it.
But I want us to, because we’re the temple. I mean, we’re the temple in which the spirit of God dwells. That’s pretty important, isn’t it? I know growing up a lot of times, I’d start running in the sanctuary of the church and mama would grab my ear and twist it and said, don’t be running.
Why was that? Because it’s the Lord’s house. You don’t, you know, you could run outside, but not, there’s something special about the Lord’s house. The truth is the Lord’s house is not the building.
You, the church, you are the church. You are the church. The building means, well, it doesn’t mean nothing, but it’s a good place to come and gather.
But the building itself is not the church. So we need to quit saying I’m going to church. I’m going to go worship with the church.
That means the people, that’s the people of God. Y’all agree with that? The church is the people. And so here we have Peter, second chapter, verse five.
And he says, you also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. I want you to get this image in your mind about a living stone. And for many, many years, I’m a visual learner.
I learn visually probably better than I do from hearing it or from reading it. And I would think of a living stone, and I don’t know why, but I would always think of like those river rocks. You’ve seen those big round rocks, you know, because they kind of look like a big loaf of bread or something.
I thought that’s a living stone. I was just wrong. That’s not what a living stone looks like.
I want you to see it. I want you to see what a living stone, what he’s talking about. We’ve got the slide, making you skip over.
Y’all see this? You see those little bitty things on the bottom? Those are people. Y’all see that? Those little bitty things down there by the rail, that’s people. That’s a big wall.
This is the wall of the Temple Mount, a picture that I took in 2009 in Jerusalem itself. You see how big those stones are? They’re massive. They’re not these little bitty river rocks that you kind of pile up together.
These are massive stones, thousands of pounds each, thousands of pounds each. And do they all look the same? All of them are different. All of them are different.
These, I believe, is what Peter’s talking about, the living stones, the living stones. How do we know that? If you have your Bible, you don’t have to flip over. I’m gonna read it.
It goes back over, but if you’re taking notes, write it down. Second Ephesians, the second chapter over in the 21st verse, he’s talking about the foundation. He’s talking about the household of God built on the foundation of Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone and built upon the apostles and the prophets.
He says, the whole building being fitted together, being fitted together, the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord in whom you are also being built together for a dwelling place of God in the spirit. This is what the temple, go back on that picture. Get back up there.
I want you to see these pictures. I want you to see how they’re fitted together. And how does that stone get there? Some strong people and they know how to work that stone.
What they do is they’d roll them up. They’d roll them up. These are huge massive stones, but you just didn’t walk out and find a natural stone that looked like that, would you? You just go out in the river and see a big block of limestone.
That’s not how it works, right? What they do is they go into the limestone quarry and somebody’s got to cut it out. They cut the grooves and they put wood in there and expand it and it breaks it. And then they got to carry it back to the temple.
And then somebody’s got to get a tool. They got to get a chisel and they got to get a hammer and they start working on that stone. Because if you just break that piece of stone out, is it going to fit? Somebody’s got to start chiseling on it.
Somebody starts working on it. You know, God’s not through chiseling on you yet. You didn’t come born a big square of limestone.
Did you? So God’s chiseling on us, working on us. It took some work, but as that work starts being done, then it can be fitted in next to the next one. And then they go get another one and they chisel it and they work it down and they get it smooth and it gets fitted.
And I’m telling you, those stones are so fitted together, you can barely stick a piece of paper in it. In fact, at the lower wall where those people are, if I’ve got other pictures, you’ll see little bitty pieces of paper folded up and people come up to this Western wall and they have prayers and they stick it in a little bitty crevice. And they can’t stick it more than about that far.
Even after all these centuries, it is still so fitted together. Folks, that’s the house that God’s building. He’s building, but he’s not building the temple anymore with limestone blocks.
He’s using living stones and you are those living stones. Doesn’t that put together a whole different image in your mind? This is what you are. This is what God is fastening together and fitting together.
This is what God is building. This is what God’s doing with you. See, you’re not a temple because you’re a block by yourself.
People think you can be just a Christian by yourself. You cannot be a Christian by yourself. You weren’t ever intended to be a Christian by yourself.
You are intended to be fitted together with other living stones. And together, Peter, when he’s talking about the living stones, he’s saying you, but he’s talking about you, not you. Does that make sense? I mean, when he’s writing this book, when Peter is writing, he’s not writing this to an individual like Paul wrote to Timothy.
He wrote this to a whole region of churches and he talks all of them about being you. He’s saying the church is to be fitted together of living stones. You’re still living.
You’re not dead. You’re still living. And God’s gonna put you where he wants you because he has a purpose for you and fitted together with the body of Christ, you serve a purpose to build this temple that brings him honor and brings him glory.
Y’all good with that? Okay, now I want us to go back to Haggai. As we spent time with Haggai last week, and I think there’s a prophecies that we need to discuss that deals exactly with that, deals exactly with it. As I told you last time, there were some problems that were going on with the Israel, I guess the people who were living in Judah.
They had been in exile for 70 years. And the king of Babylon had destroyed the temple, completely destroyed the temple, and they were in exile, they were gone. And the new king of Persia named Cyrus comes to the throne, he’s the king of Persia.
And God somehow instructed him to tell the people of Israel to go back and build a temple back in Judah. About 50,000 of them came back. And they were worshiping and they were glad and they started having the altars and performing the worship services with offerings, burnt offerings and the whole list of the laws of Moses trying to restore worship back to their people.
They built a foundation of stone and some were excited, some were not excited. The older people were not so excited because they remembered what it used to look like. And they started looking in the rear view mirror.
That’s a dangerous place to be. We’ve got to look forward. The glory days weren’t always as glorious as we kind of remember them to be, they just weren’t.
If they’d been so glorious, the temple never would have been destroyed. They might have had a big building, but they didn’t have people who were dedicated, devoted to God, and isn’t that more important? And so I want us to go back to Haggai, one of the last books of the Old Testament. There’s four specific prophecies given within a period of about four or five months.
Last week, we talked about the third prophecy, which was given on the ninth month in the second year of Darius, and it talked about holiness and how important that is. I hope that it meant something to you this week as you started evaluating your own life and holiness. But I want us to look at the prophecy that’s given a month later, I’m sorry, two months later.
It’s recorded in the second chapter of Haggai, and then we’re gonna go back to the one that was given the month before that. So we’re gonna cover two prophecies here in Haggai. So in chapter two here in Haggai, we’ve got the problem.
They’ve been worshiping for 16, 17 years. The foundation had been laid, but they stopped building the temple because they got resistance from the outside world. And they kind of got comfortable with that.
You know, sometimes we come against resistance. We say, oh, I guess that’s not the path I’m supposed to go. So you just kind of sit back and get back subtle in your routine.
We’ll take, they were worshiping, they were giving offerings, but they had a problem for 16 years, and that was they had lack. They did not have the production from their yield in their crops, in their lives, in their economy. It was about half of what it should be.
They had lack, they had problems, and God had just sent in Haggai and he sent in Zechariah and said, we’ve gotta start building the temple. That’s what Haggai was one of the main prophecies that he was given. And here in the chapter two, he’s talking to the governor and to the chief priest.
He said, who among you’s left? This is down around verse three on chapter two. Who among you’s left who saw the temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? All they see now is a floor. That’s it.
They got a foundation, they got a little work. They got about three weeks worth of work being done, that’s all they see. That’s all they see being left.
He said, in comparison with it, is it not in your own eyes is nothing? So what he’s saying is see these people who remember what it used to look like, what the church used to look like, and they spend all their time thinking about what the church used to look like, and they’ve got this attitude now that this is just not any good anymore. Y’all know Christians who are like that? We spend time talking about what it used to be when God wants us to talk about what it’s going to be. And God’s gonna give a prophecy here.
He says, he tells, number one, he tells the governor, he says, be strong. He tells the chief priest, the high priest, be strong. He tells the people of the land, be strong.
Three times, be strong. Be strong because the glory of the new temple that I’m using you to build is gonna have more glory than the old temple. And he’s trying to give them some hope.
And sometimes when you wanna start motivating people, you don’t just tell them what’s wrong, you start telling them of what it can be and what God’s gonna make it, what God’s gonna do. And so he says, be strong and work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. He didn’t say go get to work so you can get it all done yourself.
He says, you go work because I am with you and when you’re starting to do that work, according to the word I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt hundreds and hundreds of years ago, so my spirit remains among you, do not fear, don’t be afraid. I am not one of those people who believes that the church is gonna fall apart as persecution as the end time comes. There are people who say that, the church is gonna get worse and worse and worse.
I’m telling you what, the glory of the future church is gonna far surpass the glory of the old church. We may get cut and we may get pruned, but that’s so that we will have greater fruit and greater production. I believe the gifts of the spirit are gonna get stronger and stronger in God’s church.
Yes, there’ll be parts of the stones that just don’t seem to make it. They don’t get fitted together because they’re living in a way that’s unholy or that is not called by God. But I’m gonna tell you, the true church of God that is holy and that is called by God is going to be a strong church and it is gonna bring glory to his name.
I want this to be a place when we walk in here, people feel the fear of God. They feel the presence of God when they walk in this place. Our greater days are not in the past, our greater days are in the future when the spirit begins to work in us and through us.
Will y’all accept that prophecy? I believe this prophecy. This is a prophecy that I will stand on for the rest of my life. My spirit remains with you.
And he’s saying, I will shake the nations and they will come, they will come to the desire of all nations and I will fill this temple, this body, this church, who is one of the living stones in the temple of God in this world. And the glory, the glory of God is gonna be manifested. I pray and I hope and I expect that the glory of God is gonna be manifested in this place through this group of people who are willing to covenant and say, God, I am yours.
Use me, I know I try to build, but God, the builder is you. I just need to be a living stone. You know what a stone does? Stone just becomes available.
Does God chisel me where I need to be chiseled because I wanna fit in. Sometimes we don’t feel like we fit in, maybe because we got a rough edge that needs to be chiseled on a little bit. We say, oh, I don’t like them, they’re saying ugly things.
Well, you know, sometimes it takes some friction to get you fitted. I know a lot of y’all married in here and when you got married, y’all never had one argument, did you? I mean, y’all were soulmates. I mean, you got together, you’re in love, you’re in love and y’all never had a fight, an argument, just like Cheryl and I have never had an argument.
Pinocchio. Pinocchio. She’s been chiseling on me for 30 something years and I’ve been chiseling on her because God’s been chiseling on us together.
I’m gonna tell you the church is, church just sometimes we need to be chiseled on. God needs to put, he puts a little friction. It doesn’t always feel so good, but I’ll tell you what, I’m committed to be fitted with her for the rest of my life and I want you to be fitted together, fitted together as living stones for this body of believers so that the glory of God will be manifested in this place.
If these stones are not fitted together, you know what happens? Falls apart, doesn’t it? Got big gaps, got big holes. Not serving the purpose, but God’s wanting to fit us together. When there’s a lack of unity, what happens to the walls? They start, they get those gaps in it.
You start having things start crumbling because the church is not coming together in one accord. We’re doing what we wanna do, not what God wants us to do. I’m just saying God wants us to be available.
He wants you to be available, to be willing to be molded and shaped according to his will, according to his will of what his will is in our lives. Now I want us to go back to the prophecy of how this even started. Because see, he didn’t start the prophecies in Haggai with this message of what the temple was gonna be.
First, he had to get their attention. We’ll go back over to chapter one of Haggai. It’s got the same problems.
It’s only about a month before, in fact, it’s only about three weeks before they actually start working on the temple. The word of God comes to Haggai the prophet and says, is it time for you? I have some verses on these. I forget which ones I had verses on.
If I still won’t catch them. Yeah, then the word of the Lord came to Haggai the prophet, same here in verse three. And he came because he was hearing what the people were saying.
The people were saying, it’s just not time to start doing it again. We’ve got things to do. We’ve got ruts that we’re in.
We’ve got businesses, we’ve got homes, we’ve got things we’ve gotta take care of. And God is hearing that. He says, I’ve been hearing what you’ve been saying about whether you’re gonna be fitted together, building and working on the church, working on the temple.
And he says in verse three, so the word of the Lord comes to him, came to the Haggai, came by Haggai the prophet saying, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses in this temple to lie in ruins? Now see what he’s saying there? He’s saying, you’re taking care of your own business, but you’re not taking care of mine. Man, that’s so easy to do. I give to the church kind of my extra, what’s extra if I have a little time.
But man, I got vacations, I got kids sports, I’ve got all these things that I got. And it’s okay to build your house and it’s okay to put some new carpet and new floors. Those are all good things.
You’ve got to do that and take care of it. But you know some people, that’s where they spend all their time and that’s where they spend all their dedication. And they’re going to make sure their own stuff is in good order and good shape.
And we’re going to give what’s left to the church. God says to them, consider your ways. If we’re going to start rebuilding the church and God’s going to use us to rebuild the church, he says for us to consider our ways.
He didn’t say, why don’t you consider their ways? He didn’t say, I want you to consider the ways of these sinners out here in the world who are making everything bad. I don’t want you to start considering, spending all your time considering the way they behave, the way they live. He says, I want you to consider your own ways.
You deal with you first. Judgment always begins with the church first. We have to deal with us first.
Quit posting things about what other folks are doing, what their business is. We take care of ourselves. God’s saying, I want you to consider your ways.
The way, a way is not just your kind of the, your procedure on how you go about it. A way is a path. Consider your journey.
Consider your path. Consider your direction. Consider where you’re traveling.
Consider where you’re spending your time. Consider where you’re spending your money. Just happens to be the money that I gave you, but you consider your ways.
You consider your ways. He says, is it really time while the temple’s in ruin? If the church is in disrepair, if the church needs help, if the church needs work, if God’s church, and does God’s church need help? And does God’s church need you? Does God’s church need you? I believe it does. Needs every single one of us.
Every single one of us are important to be built as living stones on this wall. And he says here in verse six, he says, you’ve sown a whole lot. I mean, you’ve thrown out a lot of seed, but you bring in a little.
We wonder why we have lack in satisfaction in our lives, because we’re spending way too much time doing things with the world, and not the things that are building. God using you to build the church of Jesus Christ. He says, you’ve sown a whole lot, but you bring in a little.
You eat, but you just don’t have enough. You drink, but you’re not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one’s warm.
Boy, this is one that really hits. He says, and he who earns wages, earns wages to put them into a bag with holes. You ever feel like your checkbook just has an empty hole in the bottom of it? Everything I’m making, it’s just got this big bag, and man, I’m making some money, and I’m making some money, and I go back and look in my bag, and there’s nothing in there.
Tells it’s all falling out, because I got a big hole in the bottom of my bag. God’s saying this is not a coincidence that this is happening in our lives. This is not a coincidence on why the church has lack.
The church doesn’t have the provisions that it needs. He says, again, consider your ways. He says, I want you to go up in the mountains and get wood and start building the temple.
Why? So that I can take pleasure in it and be glorified. We’re not doing it just so we will be blessed. We’re doing it so Jesus and God and the Father and the Holy Spirit will take pleasure in what we’re doing so that he will be glorified, so that his glory, because he’s starting to build and use us to start build this church of the future that he knows is gonna be greater than the past.
Why? Why did you look for so much, and I blew it away? See, we don’t think about God blowing away our stuff. It’s what Haggai says. No, it’s what God told Haggai.
And so it’s not just Haggai’s opinion. It’s God’s opinion telling Haggai of what to tell his people. He says, why is it, verse nine, you’ve looked for much and it’s come to little.
When you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Says the Lord of hosts, because of my house that’s in ruins. He says, I’ve allowed droughts.
I’ve allowed all these things to fail, all the labor of your hands. I guess I’m past middle age now, 60 years old, looking back, and I think, what are the things that I’ve done that God has blessed and brought lasting benefit from? And how much time did I spend on just foolish, silly things that just didn’t amount to much for the kingdom of God? You better have those thoughts and considerations when you’re in your 20s or in your youth. Doing it now, man, that’s important.
Consider it and start it now. Start it when you’re young. Don’t get old like me and looking back and say, oh, I wish I had done this.
Looking at it, God, God, what is it that I’m doing? What is it that you’re doing through me? Man, how can I do more? How can I be a better living stone? He said, I just want you to get your priorities in line. And before your priorities get in line, you’re gonna have to consider your ways. You’re gonna have to consider, I guess you have to consider your own.
He said, because of this, the people obeyed the voice of the Lord and they began to do the work. The people feared the presence of God. They said, God, you are awesome.
And they feared the presence of God. And the Lord told them, I am with you. And the Lord stirred up the governor and he stirred up the high priest and he stirred up the remnant of the people.
In verse 14, chapter one, he said, the spirit of all the remnant of all the people, and they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts. And three weeks later, God gave them the revelation of what that temple was going to be. Sometime we want God to give us a revelation of great things and mighty things.
We’ll tell you, he holds off sometime on giving us that revelation until he sees that we’re serious about doing his business. You see which one came first? The first prophecy was consider your ways. I want you to start working again on the temple.
It may not be convenient. It may not be part of your routine. It may not be part of your rut.
It’s not part of what you’ve grown accustomed doing for these last 16 years. He said, I want you to start rebuilding and deciding that it’s more important to build the church of Jesus Christ than it is to build my own kingdom or your own house or your own territory. And that is a life-changing shift in thinking, isn’t it? To think it’s not about my life, it’s about his life, that I make myself available as a living stone to be fitted together in his temple.
And once that priority changes in my life, once I start having this shift in my mind that God, I’ll tell you what, it’s more important for me to be about your business than it is to be about my business. It is more important to seek your will than it is to seek my will. And once that shift starts coming, soon thereafter, God gives us the revelation of the great things and the glorious things he’s gonna do through us.
But not because, just solely because of our efforts, just because of our shift in priorities. We’re gonna mess it up. We always seem to.
But you know, God’s temple is not dependent upon your work. It’s dependent on his. And he’s gonna bring the glory.
I just wanna be one of those fitted stones, don’t you? And I wanna be in a church of a fitted living stone. I don’t wanna be out there on an island, out there a rock by myself. Because I tell you what, you won’t ever see the glory that God is going to bring to the church until we make that change.
But I am so thankful that the Holy Spirit has inspired prophets to say there is hope, there is good things that can come through that shift in priorities and the way we change our mindset to say, I want to be a part of what God is going to do. So all I’m asking today is, do you wanna be part of what God is doing? Do you? Man, it’s so important for us to do that. I wanna be part of what God’s doing.
I want his will to be done, not what I want. I want what God’s will to be done. Don’t you? Like, if you believe, if you really want to, if you really want to, I’m gonna ask you to stand.
If you really want to be part of what God’s gonna be doing in your life and through the life of the church, it’s important for us to do it. It’s important for us to stand together. And it’s important for us to be a people who come together and we begin to work.
And is it gonna be hard? You know, you start chiseling on stuff and you’re gonna have some bumps and some bruises. You’re gonna have some squished fingers and somebody’s gonna step on your toes. But you know what happens in your own home, doesn’t it? And you still love them.
She still loves me after all these years and chiseling. You’d think I’d be done by now. Or you would be done with me by now.
I’d had all the, I still got these rough edges and she’s still chiseling, but she does it so sweetly. But it’s still violent and it’s a little violence. She’s not violent, I don’t mean that.
But the whole process, y’all understand the process, the process roughs us up some. I’m ready for the task, how about you? Amen. Dallas, why don’t you come up because what I would like for us to do is while they’re going to the baptismals or anybody else who wants to appeal to God for a clean conscience and to be baptized today, I’m gonna ask us just to, I’m gonna ask you to pray.
I’m gonna ask you to pray that God will bring to your mind the things that you need to start considering. Now, I don’t need to be considering what she’s doing or what she needs to do. I don’t need to start considering what Nelda needs to do.
That’s not, I don’t need to worry about her business. I need to worry about mine. And Nelda needs a lot of help.
But it’s important to have godly saints and we encourage each other. We encourage each other and say, I want to be fitted in that wall like they are and I want to belong to it. I want to be a part of the temple of God.
Because I will tell you when we do, the glory of God is gonna fall on this place and God’s will will be done. And we will see people brought to him. We will see disciples being made.
I’m excited about what God’s gonna do with us. Amen. Let’s go and turn the lights down and spend some time praying.
If you would, let’s pray together. Feel free to come to the altars and pray that God will really use us.