0:07 Like us to turn to Matthew 21. As you know, I've been we've been 0:28 looking at um this incident in Jesus' life which happened twice as far as we can read where he came into the temple and threw out the money changers those who were selling doves and um 0:45 he's made this statement my house in verse 12 or 13 shall be called a house of prayer but you have made it you are making it a robber's den or a den of thieves. And a couple of weeks ago we looked at some of the characteristics of a den of 1:05 thieves. I'd like us today to look at what it means to be a house of prayer then. These are very intentional words that Jesus used and he was actually quoting from the book of Jeremiah in when he referred to the den of thieves 1:24 and he was quoting from the book of Isaiah when he was talking about the house of prayer. I'd like to us to look at that. What it means to be a house of prayer. Uh let's look at this this quotation from Isaiah chapter 56. 1:41 So Isaiah 56 Oh, here it is. Okay. 2:03 Can you set it on the slideshow, Derek? This Okay, it's not working. That's fine. So, Isaiah 56 will begin reading in verse one. Yeah, there it is. I got it. Isaiah 56 2:22 verse one. Thus says the Lord, preserve justice and do righteousness, for my salvation is about to come and my righteousness to be revealed. So, wonderful words. The Lord really made this personal for me this week. 2:41 Preserve justice and do righteousness. As if the Lord was saying, "Santosh, keep fighting. Keep pressing on in justice and righteousness. My salvation is about to come and my righteousness is about to be revealed." Let me pause there for a moment and 2:57 encourage you, dear brother, dear sister, if you are in the battle and fighting the good fight of faith and you feel discouraged and you wonder how long will I have to keep doing this before I see God answer a specific prayer that I'm 3:14 asking him for and praying to him. He says, "My salvation is about to come. My righteousness is about to be revealed. How blessed is the one who does this? Who preserves justice and righteousness?" Um how blessed is the one who does this? 3:31 And the son of man who takes a hold of it, who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Let's skip down to verse five. "To them I will give in my house and within my walls a memorial 3:50 and a name better than that of sons and daughters. Have you thought that there's a name better than son and daughter? I think there will be children of God in heaven. Sons and daughters. And then there will be these who have a name better than 4:07 sons and daughters. I don't know how to describe it other than to simply quote the word of God. God promised there will be those who are just content to be children of God. And that's wonderful. It's not despise that. And 4:21 then there will be those who said, "Lord, you are everything to me. I give up everything on this earth. I forsake everything on this earth. And they get a name that is better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them 4:36 an everlasting name which will not be cut off. Also, the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord. That's you and I. We were not Jews originally. We are not Jews. We were not part of the promise originally. To the foreigners who join themselves to 4:50 the Lord, to minister to him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone who keeps from profaning the Sabbath, and holds fast my covenant, even those I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of 5:08 prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples. The Lord God who gathers the dispersed 5:26 of Israel declares, "Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered." The Lord God who gathers the dispersed of Israel declares, "Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered." Do you You 5:45 that? That yet others God is going to gather into this place to those already gathered. To those who are willing to stand and hold fast his covenant. To stand against compromise. God's going to do that. But the the thing that speaks to me about 6:03 this is that it's God who does the gathering. It says, "Yet others will I gather to them." The God who gathers. This phrase, you ever have that in your life where a phrase jumps out of the Bible to you almost like it's got life, 6:20 you know, imagine if you open the Bible and there was a bug in there or something like that like a fly or something like that just jumped out. I think it would startle us. I believe the word of God should be doing that for us in a real way though. 6:32 Things should just come out of it and like a seed that jumps out of the written word of God because it's living and it's active and it's sharp. And it's ought to bring conviction. And that word, this word jumped out for 6:48 me, the God who gathers. Isaiah 56:8. The God who gathers, the Lord God who gathers. And that's the interesting thing about the way that we're seeking to go as a church family is that God is the one who gathers. God is the one who does this work of 7:04 gathering. That's quite the opposite of how I see many churches trying to build their build a congregation by marketing programs or advertising or uh and not not that there's anything wrong with advertising. But the draw is 7:22 the work of man. It's kind of like trying to convince people to come and work for a company that's just started. You know, every now and then we see a new company that a new store that opens in town and they have signs, "Now 7:34 hiring." "Come and work for us. Come and work for us." And I find that many churches have imitated the practices of the world in how they try to build their congregation. Come. Come and do the Come here because we'll do this for you or we'll do that 7:49 for you. Come and lobbying, trying to convince people. Speaking evil of others in order to get people to draw themselves to to a church. This is what I see going on in Christendom. And I I believe that in eternity there 8:04 will be a lot of people who tried to do God's work their way. The difference between doing God's work his way and doing God's work our way. I know for many years I fell into the trap of trying to do something for God. I came up with an idea and said, "Oh 8:24 Lord, I'm going to give you this." Came up with another idea. "Lord, I'm going to do this for you." And those are the works that in 1 Corinthians 3 Paul and the Holy Spirit describes as those works which will be destroyed. They're not evil works. 8:38 But they're the works that began with my wonderful idea. I said, "Lord, I can do something great for you. I'm going to go." Whether it's start a church or go as a missionary or do this or do that. The work that originates with me is 8:54 wood, hay, and straw that will burn. And that's why the secret of every work of God, whether it's being a church, a local expression of the body of Christ, or doing a work of evangelism, for example, reaching out to your neighbors, 9:09 reaching out to those around you. All of that must begin with God. From him, through him, and to him. The God who gathers and you Jesus said the same thing in John chapter 6. This verse I've probably we've probably shared this 9:23 here much in the last few months and it's good for us to look at it again. In John 6 verse 37. John 6 verse 37. This is how we want to build this It's not our church, it belongs to Jesus Christ. He's the head. 9:41 And this is how we want God to establish a pure testimony for his name's sake in this place, right here in the heart of Loveland at RLCF. This is how we want to build our build this church. John 6:37, "All that the Father gives me 9:58 will come to me. And I will certainly not cast out and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out." Sorry, I lost my place for a moment. Let me read that again. "All that the Father gives me will come 10:18 to me and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out." So, we pray and we seek God and say, "Lord, you give us who it is that you want to come into this place. Who is it that the Father has given to us at this church to be a part of this 10:36 local expression of the body. That's whom we want. All whom the Father has given to me will come to me and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out because Jesus lived by this one principle. Here's the reason Jesus could say that 10:51 that the Father will draw people. You know that Jesus' circle of influence geographically was very small. The Father could have ordained for Jesus to come and go to all the countries of this world that existed at that time. 11:05 All of those continents were around even in Jesus' time. But you know that Jesus never went to India? And he never went to Africa. He never went to China. He never went came to America. He had a very, very small circle of 11:18 influence geographically. But he lived by this principle that Lord, you Father, you tell me where to go. You tell me to go to Jerusalem, that's where I'm going to go. You tell me to live in Capernaum, that's where I'm going to settle down. You were 11:33 ordained for me to grow up in Nazareth, that's where I'm going to be. And for 18 year or 30 years with a needy hurting world around Jesus all over the world, there were Hindus in India while Jesus was alive. There were Muslims in other 11:50 parts of um uh the the um the world at that time. That actually Muhammad came later. But there were religions all around the world in Jesus' time. And yet Jesus' rest and Jesus' passion and his vision came from staying within 12:09 the circle that the Father had drawn around him. Knowing that the Father would draw to him all those whom he wanted the Father wanted him to have. And Jesus' church really consisted of 12 men that he labored with and worked with. But those 12:23 12 minus one, minus Judas Iscariot, turned the world right side up. And the reason for that was the reason the Father would do the gathering. The reason the Father would do the gathering was because Jesus lived by this principle on verse 38, "I have come down 12:40 from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me." So, if we apply this and we should apply this to the body of Christ today, us as a local expression of the body of Christ, we should be able to say, in fact, we 12:53 can say, "All whom the Father gives us will come to us and we'll do the work. We'll plant the seeds. We'll tell others about what God is doing in us, through us, in our midst. Yes, we'll share the word. Yes, we'll evangelize. 13:07 Yes, we'll bear witness. But God will be the one who gathers." And all whom the Father gives us will come to us and the one who comes to us we will not cast out, certainly, because God has placed us here not to do our own will, but to do the 13:24 will of who who sent us. God has placed us here not to do our own will, but the will of him who sent us. So, this This brings me much comfort as we seek to go this way, as we seek to ex- uh build see the Lord build his church here in our in 13:37 this place. This brings me much comfort. That God is the one who gathers, and all whom the Father has given will come to us. Now, our unity, my dear brothers and sisters, is not built on the fact that we like each other, or we uh even that 13:54 we have a vision set before us. Our unity must only be that which is created by God. If God gathered me, and God gathered you, and God gathered you, and God gathered each one of us, and God gathered all those yet to come, 14:11 do you think the devil can ever break that apart? Absolutely not. So, our unity must be created by God, not by human methods. In fact, we can we can never work to create unity in the spirit. We can never work to create it. We can 14:27 seek to preserve it. We read in Ephesians 4, "Be diligent to preserve that." That's That would be like for me saying, "If God gives me a child, I want to be diligent to raise up that child in the fear of God." God's given me a child. He's given me 14:43 six children. I'm going to be diligent, along with my wife, to raise them up in the fear of God. But I can't on my own effort make a child. God created each one of those children supernaturally in Megan's womb, created those those children in her womb to be 15:01 born. And once God gave them to me physically, I could I could care for them. I could seek to preserve them. Have we seen that unity is exactly like that? And I think there are many churches in the world trying to create unity. 15:17 Now, you can you can create a very close imitation of unity. Man can create things that look very similar to that which is of God. Man can create very life-looking, life-sized robots 15:36 that look human. I mean, sometimes when I'm walking in a store, the other day it actually happened. I was in a store and I all of a sudden I was aware of this uh being next to me, this person next to me, till I looked around and saw it was 15:49 a mannequin in the store. It was so life-sized, so human-looking that out of the corner of my eye I thought this was a person that I almost bumped into and I was like, "Why is he standing so close to me?" And I realized 16:01 it was just a mannequin. So, man can create things that look very close, but I mean, uh it's funny. We were at um at the Benson Sculpture Park with our children a few weeks ago and I love messing with my little boy, but I set him down next to some of these 16:17 statues which are really life-sized life-sized and life-looking and they're realistic. And he's terrified of them because he thinks that, you know, this one this one statue has like a stern is a stern-looking man and my youngest son 16:28 Xander is is terrified of it. Uh and I'm trying to wean him off of it. So, I make him sit next to it next to the statue and he's always clinging to me. He thinks it's real. But none of you would sit next to that statue and even for a moment think it's 16:41 really as as realistic as it looks. And it's just like that. I find that there's so much even in me in my flesh of a desire to make something that God has said, "Only I can make it." And I'll tell you for even in your marriage, think about it, husbands and 16:56 wives. Do you know that the unity between you and your wife and you and your husband is not something you can manufacture? Yes, you can take her out on dates. Yes, you can cook him wonderful meals. Yes, you can buy each other flowers and those 17:09 are wonderful things, but those are the preservings, not the creations. The creation must happen by God. And likewise, now apply that within the church. You and I can never have unity as hard as we work at it. In fact, let's 17:26 stop trying to create unity. Let's allow the Lord to create that unity between us because I say, "Lord, I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who you who sent me. I'm here to do your will, Lord. And if your 17:41 will ordains for me to be united with that other person who you have gathered here, then let it be. And let me not try to create unity with somebody that you don't want me to be united with in a particular way. And let me not try to manufacture unity 17:59 in my own strength with those that you have gathered into our minds. As you leave this place this morning, dear brother, dear sister, especially as you commit you as we have committed ourselves to this local church, let the 18:11 prayer of our hearts be, "Lord, I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, not even to have certain friends or to have a certain type of church. I lay down on the altar my vision of River of Life Christian Fellowship. It begins with us as elders, 18:28 and every one of us that's a part of this church, Lord, I have an idea of what RLCF should look like and who should be a part of it, but I lay that down because that's a man-made idea. That's an idea that begins with me. I'd 18:42 love if that person was a part of this church. Yes, it's good to have that burden. I'm sure many of us have friends and loved ones that we long would come and taste of the goodness of God in this place with us and experience rivers of 18:54 living water in their lives, but God will be the one who gathers. Tell everyone as many people as you want as you can about it, about what God is doing in your life through this church, but let God be the one who gathers. 19:09 And as he gathers, let God be the one who builds that creates that unity between us, knits us together, and then we will nurture it. We'll preserve it. We We will raise up those children of unity, as it were. God creates it, we join his work in 19:27 preserving it, in strengthening it, in nurturing it. That's our responsibility. You see, Paul had that responsibility. He says, "We're not lording it over you. We're not lording it over you, but we're just helpers of your joy." 19:42 God's created that joy. We're here to stoke the flame. God's the one who manufactured the fire, we're fanning the flame. That's our responsibility as teachers, as elders, and as brothers and sisters to each other. That's your 19:54 responsibility, husband and wife. The love, let me say that again, the love between you between each of you in your marriage is not one that you can create. If you create it, it will be a counterfeit that will die eventually. Let God create that 20:10 love, and you do everything by the power of God to fan those flames of love. So, first of all, this unite unity is created by God. And the difference between a um a den and a house. I want you to think about that for a moment. What's the difference 20:28 between a den and a house? A den is a gathering of people. It's a bunch of people that come together with a common purpose, you can say. Now, even if their purpose is even though their purpose is malicious, they plan to do some evil, 20:42 the den is a gathering of people that have come together with a united purpose. And my fear my greatest fear for us as a church is that we would become a den. Now, yeah, we don't we're not planning to do anything evil. We're not planning 20:58 to overthrow the government or things like that. But do you realize Do we realize that the work of man is is much an enemy of God as the work of the devil. Let me say that again. The work of man is as much the enemy of God as the work of the devil. 21:16 And you would say, "We're not We're not here worshipping Satan. We're not We're not seeking to do evil things. We want to do good things. We want to build a church. We want to have fellowship. We want this. We want that. We want the other 21:28 thing. We want good teaching." But when we see that the work of man is as much the enemy of the work of God as the work of the devil is, then we will forsake those works of men as well, our own ideas. And the characteristic of the den is 21:43 this, it's man's idea. And it's the gathering of people, even though their purpose is united. It's a gathering of people. Now, you wouldn't expect you you you would expect that okay, maybe the den had 20 people at one point, the gang 21:59 had 20 people. Well, they lost somebody. Maybe somebody died or somebody decided, "I don't like this gang, so I'm going to join a different gang or just go be on my own." That's expected if you're part of a den. If you're part of a house on the other 22:13 hand, you're cemented in. You're put next to another brick. And you're plastered in and and uh if you're, you know, you're you're part of the building. If you showed up one Sunday morning and you saw a big hole in that wall because 22:29 a brick was removed, you would say you would really wonder what happened. That you don't expect that brick to just come out by itself. Something happened. And the difference between a den and a house is that a house consists of 22:45 these individual objects that have been knit together, that have been cemented together. Quite different, for example, than taking these same Some of this building is built with stones. Taking this same pile of bricks and just keeping a pile 22:59 of those outside. That's not a house. A house is not just a pile of bricks that are piled high together. It's a group of bricks that are cemented together into a shape that are functioning in a particular way. So, not a 23:15 pile of bricks, but a firm wall. I want to show you this. What does this mean to be cemented into a wall, to be a house? Not just a den, not just a pile of bricks. First of all, in Mark chapter 4, I want you to see this. 23:36 How will God be able to preserve us in unity and in in unity with him first of all, and in unity with each other, preserve the fellowship among us? That's the desire of our hearts, we know that. First of all, it's an individual thing. 23:50 Each one of us is responsible for the firm root in ourselves. I find that when when people go through difficult times, you know, many people in the world have been through difficult church experiences, maybe church splits 24:04 or people in churches hurt them or or other things like that. And I find that with many people, this often results in them losing their faith altogether. They're like, "Ah, I've lost faith in the church, so I've lost faith in 24:17 Jesus." Or at least the Jesus that they've been shown. And I think one of the reasons for that, and I've known many people, perhaps you have as well, who went through a difficult church experience, at the end of which they walked away from their 24:30 Christian faith altogether. And you may say, "Well, you blame the church for for what happened and all of those things." But I I believe it starts before that. Anybody who has a firm root in themselves can never be shaken, first of all. 24:45 If you have a firm root in yourself, it doesn't matter who falls away around you, you can never fall away because you're grounded in Christ, first of all. So, our unity, we're seeking to be this house of prayer that God is building. I 24:57 want to be a part of that. But it's not just me being cemented with you. That comes much later. First of all, I must be firmly grounded in Christ. That's absolutely vital. That's what Jesus says here in Mark 4. We'll read in verse 16. You know this story is 25:15 about the the seed that the sower planted in different ground and there was the side of the road where the birds came and stole it. And then there was rocky soil which didn't have root. And then there was soil which had root, 25:27 but after it came up, it also allowed thorns and thistles and weeds which choked out that life. And then there was three types of good soil which bore 30%, 60%, or 100% yield. This one, this particular one that we're looking at, 25:43 is the rocky soil which didn't have depth. It had a little bit of topsoil, but then there was hardness underneath. So, Mark 4 verse 16. In a similar way, these, which is the seeds that has planted that that fell on the rocky 26:00 soil, these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. So, in other words, these are people who listen to a good message and they think, "Wow, that's some great teaching. I love 26:15 this church because the teaching is so good." Hold on a minute. Let's see what happens. Give it some time. And what we see happens here, these are the ones on whom seed was sown on the rocky places who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with 26:30 joy. But they have no firm root in themselves. See, this is not a firm root in my pastor, a firm root in the teacher I'm I'm listening to, a firm root in this person or that person. Firm root in themselves. And I'll tell you this, 26:50 we could we could seek to build a pure testimony for God's name and God could be established in this place and and be glorified here, but if every single one of us does not have firm root in ourselves, it's just a matter of time 27:03 before we will fall away. It doesn't matter how deep that topsoil is. If eventually there isn't room for that seed to bear root, eventually that seed will just fall away and there will be nothing left. So, the first exhortation for us, if we 27:22 seek to be a house of prayer, God is building this house, not just a pile of bricks, not a den of thieves, but a house that he's fashioning together. And you know it's uncomfortable to be in a house. Imagine, what would you rather be? Just 27:35 a pile of bricks where you have your own space. You know, even a pile of bricks, each brick has its individuality, has its own space, it can come and go as it wants. People can come and steal those bricks from that pile of bricks 27:48 anytime they want. You know, one of the reasons why God has helped us as elders to be freed from the fear of people coming and stealing from our flock. You know, there's a lot of I I've talked I talked to pastors at different times and they 28:04 at times I've heard testimonies of people who complain about how people came into their church and tried to steal people to go to their other church. Now, we should never have to be worried about that in this church if we're building the house. 28:16 If we're building a pile of bricks, yeah, I'm counting my bricks every night, every morning. 100? Yep, it's still 100. 100? It's still 100. 99? Oh, what happened? In the middle of the night somebody came and stole one of my 28:26 bricks. But you don't expect you know, we're not spending our time counting how many bricks are in this building or how many panels of wood or joists. No, because it's integrated in. And the only one that can be stolen from 28:40 a flock is the is the sheep that's wandering, is the brick that's a loner that's sitting out by itself, that is attached to the building but not integrated in. And my And the secret, my dear brothers and sisters, is to be built into the 28:55 body, but it begins first of all with having firm root in yourself. Firm root in yourself. Firm root in Jesus Christ. That means, you know what? If every single one of us falls away, you shouldn't. Including your own spouse, your own 29:10 husband or wife. If your husband or wife falls away and you see everybody else around you fall away, it shouldn't shake you. That That's what it means to have firm root in yourself. This is an individual thing. And you know, and God knows, and 29:24 the devil knows whether you have that firm root. Now, it goes on from there. Having built that firm root, it doesn't stop there. And you've probably heard me speak about the congregation and the club and the church. A congregation is those who have 29:37 firm root in themselves, but they don't have the second part, which is they're not united with others. And the club is those who have friendship with others, but they have no firm root in themselves. And clubs come and go and come and go and come and go 29:52 and will continue to do so until Jesus return. Congregationalists, if you call them, will continue to have those firm roots, but God will never able be able to build a house through them. The church. Turn to Ephesians chapter 3. 30:09 The church is consistent of these who have firm root in themselves, who now have firm established unity with others, who are also have firm root in themselves. That's what the Holy Spirit talks about in Ephesians chapter 3. 30:26 We'll look at verse 17. Ephesians 3 verse 17. He says in verse 14 that I bow He's writing to a church. Maybe the church in Ephesus had a little bit of club mentality. Or Paul saw, "Listen, you guys are doing a lot of wonderful things and I see the 30:44 ministry and I see how you have love for each other or superficial love, but I want I bow my knees, he says in verse 14, before the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth derives its name, that verse 17, Christ may dwell in 31:00 your hearts through faith. That's the firm root in yourself. Christ dwelling in your heart is up to you. It's not up to me. It's not up to your husband or wife, your brother or sister, your children, your parents. Has nothing to do with that. Christ dwelling 31:14 in your hearts through faith is up to you. That firm root in yourself. And the second part of that is that you being ground rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints. 31:33 Rooted and grounded in love with all the saints. What is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. That you might become this 31:46 house. So think about a builder who's building. The goal is all the fullness of God. This is a building word. Filled up to all the fullness of God. It's a building word. God is building his church. All the fullness of God. That's the final 32:02 destination. And the way God wants us to get there is first of all that we are rooted and grounded in love. Firm root in ourselves. No, first sorry, first of all, that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. That Christ himself has a dwelling place 32:19 in my heart through faith. And that being rooted and grounded in love, I will comprehend the love of God with all the saints. Rooted and grounded in love. So you see those two aspects there. Individually first of all, firm 32:31 root in myself. Corporately or organically, that's a better word. Corporate, I think of corporate, you know, corporations. If you work for a particular company, I told you, "Oh, I got a new job." Um I I now work for this different company. 32:46 That's that that You think, "Okay, nothing so great about it." But if you were to see that this finger was part of my body yesterday, but now it's part of somebody else's body, tomorrow you'd wonder, "Something was not right." 32:59 Right? Let me give you that example again. This finger is currently a part of my body, but if tomorrow you see that I'm missing a finger and one of you has six. This extra finger has become a part of your finger. Something is wrong. This 33:11 finger, first of all, did not have firm root in itself, a firm connection with the head. And secondly, it was not rooted and grounded in love with this hand. That's a picture of the body of Christ. That's why we're called the body of Christ. 33:27 So, to summarize this. First of all, this unity is created by God. Which is not something we can create on our own. Secondly, it it is preserved. Unity is created by God and it's preserved by each of us having firm root 33:42 in ourselves. And secondly, being rooted and grounded in love with each other. May the Lord do this in our midst. I pray that he will establish and he is. He's going to. As many as the Father gives to us, we will receive. And anyone 33:56 who comes to us, we will not cast out because we've come down from heaven not to do our will, but the will of him who sent us. This is how we build a house of prayer. Amen.
