For We are God's Building

Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
1 Corinthians 3: 1-9

Imagine, if you will, that you work for a company whose president found it necessary to travel out of the country to spend a long time overseas. So he says to you and the other trusted employees, "Look, I'm going to leave. And while I'm gone, I want you to pay close attention to the business. You manage things while I'm away. I will write you regularly. When I do, I will instruct you in what you should do from now until I return from this trip." Everyone agrees.

He leaves and stays gone for a couple of years. During that time he writes often, communicating his desires and concerns. Finally he returns. He walks up to the front door of the company and immediately discovers everything is in a mess--weeds flourishing in the flower beds, windows broken across the front of the building, the girl at the front desk is sleeping, loud music is coming from several offices, and two or three people are messing around in the back room. Instead of making a profit, the business has suffered a great loss. Without hesitation he calls everyone together and with a frown asks, "What happened? Didn't you get my letters?"

You say, "Oh, yeah, sure. We got all your letters. We've even bound them in a book. And some of us have memorized them. In fact, we have 'letter study' every Sunday. You know, those were really great letters." I think the president would then ask, "But what did you do about my instructions?" And, no doubt the employees would respond, "Do? Well, nothing. But we read every one!"

There’s not much point in studying the Bible and going to church every Sunday if we aren’t going to do what God has instructed us to do. I can only imagine at how God shakes his head at us when we show up on Sundays wearing our Sunday best, but our hearts are filled with sinfulness. The Lord wants us to take an active part in our relationship with Him and to do that we must be more than church-goers. We must be church-doers.

In their own way, those people in that company were obedient to their boss. They stayed working at the company and they did read those letters of his, but they never quite understood what it was they were supposed to be doing. What are we working toward? Do we have a goal as Christians? Do we have a purpose here at Trinity church in Centre Hall, Pennsylvania? Does everyone know what the goal is and how we are working to achieve it?

George Harrison once said that, “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there.” As Christians we need to know where we are going. We need to know more about what Jesus Christ is up to in the world and there is one really good way to do that. It requires making the Christian way of life something more than a Sunday activity and instead make it an all week habit. If we are never thinking about God outside of church, how is it even possible to SEE God outside of this building?!

The best way to see God is to start speaking to Him. We all know we are supposed to pray, but did you know that some of the most faithful Christians in all of our history have been men and women who pray continually? Everything that happened in their day was spoken of with God. These men and women are now the pillars of our Christian faith because they knew what Jesus was up to in the world. They knew where they were going because they obeyed the Lord.

Too often we get caught up in the pettiness of life so God become obscured. Just like those early Christians, fighting over who they followed. I follow Paul, well I follow Apollos. And Paul writes back to them that neither Paul or Apollos are important at all. They were merely the instruments God used to bring those early Christians to Jesus Christ. What is important in the story is always “what is Jesus up to?” and then following Him.

That is where the people in the company went wrong. They knew exactly what their employer was up to, exactly what he wanted from them, but they did not follow him. The old adage of while the cat’s away the mice will play is perfect for these people. Honestly, it speaks the truth about all human beings. We do not have any sense of urgency when it comes to following Jesus Christ. Most of us go the whole day without worrying about following Jesus. We’re too busy putting out fires at work, fixing dinner at home, putting the kids to bed and running errands for our spouses to have time to worry about what Jesus is telling us to do.

You see, if we take the time to listen to Jesus he helps us build up defenses. He helps us to change those sinful parts of us into good and Godly parts. Jesus is trying to help us create a life and a world where we can always be happy and content. But we are too busy doing our own thing and traveling our own path to bother giving his way a chance. We say we are obedient and that we want to build a better world, but whenever we get the chance we don’t often take it.

This reminds me of a poem I once read about a man watching a building demolition. It went:

As I watched them tear a building down
A gang of men in a busy town
With a ho-heave-ho, and a lusty yell
They swung a beam and the side wall fell.

I asked the foreman, "Are these men skilled,
And the men that you'd hire if you wanted to build?"
He gave a laugh and said, "No, indeed,
Just common labor is all I need."

"I can easily wreck in a day or two,
What builders have taken years to do."
And I thought to myself, as I went my way
Which of these roles have I tried to play?

Am I a builder who works with care,
Measuring life by rule and square?
Am I shaping my work to a well-made plan
Patiently doing the best I can?

Or am I a wrecker who walks to town
Content with the labor of tearing down?
"O Lord let my life and my labors be
That which will build for eternity!"

The only way we can make our life and labors geared toward eternity is if we pay attention to what God is telling us. We need to open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, we need to keep our eyes peeled for where Jesus is and we need to ask ourselves if we are doing this because of God or because of our self. But even more than knowing what Jesus is up to is actually following where he leads us.

Do we have a goal that we work toward, one with a carefully made plan? Are we patiently trying to do the best that we can or are we the kind of people that will tear down what others have worked so hard to create and never notice the damage we leave in our wake? Paul tells us that we are co-workers in God’s service, we have a place in God’s grand plan, but we have to be willing to do more than read the instruction manual – we have to be willing to follow. We have much to do!

Amen.