Being Abandoned by God

I invite you now to turn your Bibles to 1 Kings chapter 6, that's found on page 240 in the Bibles that are in your seats. I'll give you a moment to find that. We've been looking at the life of Solomon and continue on here. He's been making preparations for the temple. He got the kingdom established and at peace and he's gathered many things, as David had gathered many things for the temple construction and now Solomon continues in this. This is the first Kings chapter 6, beginning in verse 1. This is God's word, eternally true. In the 480th year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, in the 4th year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the 2nd month, he began to build the temple of the Lord. The temple that Solomon built for the Lord was 60 qubits long, 20 wide, and 30 high. The portico at the front of the main hall of the temple extended the width of the temple that is 20 qubits and projected 10 qubits from the front of the temple, verse 4. He made a narrow, clear story windows in the temple. Against the walls of the main hall and inner sanctuary, he built a structure around the building in which there were side rooms. The lowest floor was 5 qubits wide, the middle floor 6 qubits, and the third floor 7. He made offset ledges around the outside of the temple so that nothing would be inserted into the temple walls, verse 7. In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used and no hammer, chisel, or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built. The entrance to the lowest floor was on the south side of the temple, a stairway led up to the middle level and from there to the third. So he built the temple and completed it, roofing it with beams and cedar planks, and he built the side rooms all along the temple. The height of each was 5 qubits and they were attached to the temple by beams of cedar. The word of the Lord came to Solomon as for this temple you are building. If you follow my decrees, carry out my regulations and keep all my commands and obey them, I will fulfill through you the promise I gave to David your father and I will live among the Israelites and will not abandon my people Israel. So Solomon built the temple and completed it. He lined its interior walls with cedar boards, paneling them from the floor of the temple to the ceiling, and covered the floor of the temple with planks of pine. He partitioned off 20 qubits at the rear of the temple with cedar boards from floor to ceiling to form within the temple in the inner sanctuary, the most holy place. The main hall in front of this room was 40 qubits long. The inside of this temple with cedar carved with gourds and open flowers. Everything with cedar, no stone was to be seen. He prepared the inner sanctuary within the temple to set the arc of the covenant of the Lord there. The inner sanctuary was 20 qubits long, 20 wide, and 20 high. He overlayed the inside with pure gold, and he also overlaid the altar of cedar. Solomon covered the inside of the temple with pure gold, and he extended gold chains across the front of the inner sanctuary, which was overlaid with gold. So he overlaid the whole interior with gold. He also overlaid with gold the altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary. In the inner sanctuary he made a pair of cherubim of olive wood, each 10 qubits high. One wing of the first cherub was 5 qubits long, and the other wing was 5 qubits, 10 qubits from wing tip to wing tip. The second cherubim also measured 10 qubits, for the two cherubim were identical in size and shape. The height of each cherub was 10 qubits. He placed the cherubim inside the innermost room of the temple, with their wings spread out. The wing of one cherub touched one wall while the wing of the other touched the other wall, and their wings touched each other in the middle of the room. He overlayed the cherubim with gold. On the walls all around the temple, in both the inner and outer rooms, he carved cherubim, palm trees and open flowers. He also covered the floors of both the inner and outer rooms of the temple with gold. For the entrance of the inner sanctuary, he made doors of olive wood with 5 sighted jams. And on the two olive wood doors, he carved cherubim, palm trees and open flowers, and overlaid the cherubim and palm trees with beaten gold. In the same way, he made four sighted jams of olive wood for the entrance to the main hall. He also made two pine doors, each having two leaves that turned in sockets. He carved cherubim, palm trees and open flowers on them, and overlaid them with gold, hammered evenly over the carvings. He built the inner courtyard of the three courses of dressed stone and one course of trims, cedar beings. The foundation of the temple of the Lord was laid in the fourth year in the month of Zid. In the eleventh year, in the month of Bool, the eighth month, the temple was finished, in all its details, according to its specifications. He has spent seven years building it. Herein's our reading, there's a response of thankfulness, it's printed for us in our bulletin. The word of the Lord, thanks indeed, let's pray. Our God and Father, we are grateful, thankful to you for giving us this year word. And we know from Jesus your son that all the Old Testament speaks of him, so we pray that you would teach us of him. Teach us about ourselves, teach us about our relationship to you. Teach us about you being with us and not abandoning us. Thank you for the grace of Jesus, and it's in his name we pray. Amen. I don't know if any of you have ever had the experience of being in the store when you're a little kid, literally losing where your parents were. In the terror of that, I had that for about four seconds once, but I was terrified for four seconds. And so, remember being in K.V. Toy and Hobby in H.V. Mall, in Victor, New York, when that happens. She wasn't far away, I just wandered into the next aisle of that toy store. But it's a hard feeling, none of us like to feel abandoned. And we know from life that sometimes when people, whether they're Christians or non-Christians, when hard things are happening to them, they feel like I just feel like God has abandoned me. And sometimes God is with that person and still with that person. Sometimes God has never been with that person, but they're just feeling like because my circumstances are such, I feel like there's no sense in which I feel God's blessing now. And so this morning we talk about this, what it is to be abandoned by God, and who can be, and what's going on with all of that. We're almost always talking about the great benefits that happen for God's people and to God's people by Jesus being with us. And those benefits are out there for us in this passage. But yet we see in this passage the specifics of God saying you might be abandoned in person second king, the people had been abandoned. They were the people reading that these two books were in exile in Babylon and God had given up on them. Now he was faithful to his covenants, but he had left and since the Babylonians in, we talked about this a little bit in Sunday school this morning, he sent the Babylonians in and they ravaged the land and then finally in 586 BC, they destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, not one stone left upon another, burned it, burned it down. And so those reading this book, hot off the press, so to speak, had this experience. They were asking the question, why has God abandoned us, why are we in exile, why are we no longer in the land of promise, what's experiencing the blessings that God has promised through Moses and then through David. So we talk about often the great benefits and blessings of Jesus being in our lives, graciously loving us, to the end of our lives and into eternity. But today we look at this passage in which God has to focus really on what can cause a person to be abandoned by God, whether from the get-go, to be in a state of being abandoned, or being abandoned after some kind of experience in the church. So as you're looking in your bullets in there, if you'd like to pull up links in an outline, you're welcome to do that this morning. Here we go, the first part of our introductory comments is your A there. We know, first of all, that blessings come when God is present. Blessings come when God is present to bless. The company is present to a person, to a church, a local church, to a denomination, and God is present to bless those people, or those organizations, our blessed. And we see this in verse 13, look down in verse 13, there in chapter 6. That says, and I will, talking to Solomon, and I will live, or dwell, among the Israelites, and I will not abandon my people Israel. And so there we see two sides of things, and that's your B here too, that many have been abandoned by God. Many have been abandoned by God, and they don't experience his blessings. This is the case for those first reading, first and second Kings, probably around 560, around there, often exiled in Babylon, they've been abandoned, and God has removed his blessing presence from them, he was not present to bless them, and he had abandoned them as a people, and they were often a foreign land oppressed. This may be true too, for a couple of kinds of groups, see in your outline there. It can be true for a church, that's your first blank there, a church, an individual church persons can be abandoned by God. Again, this is the chief question that all of the first and second Kings is answering. First and second Kings, about every paragraph, you can answer the question, why were God's people an exile in the 500's B scene? And unlike first and second Chronicles, which highlights the good things that people did in the same time period, first and second Kings, basically in the same time period as first and second Chronicle, highlights all the negative things that earned the people exile. What they were doing, that earned them the abandonment, the turning away of God. So this passage both helps us evaluate our lives to determine if God has abandoned us, or if he hasn't been with us in the first place, but it also helps us if we are walking in good faith and enjoying Jesus being present in our lives. This passage gives us warnings of directions where like you hear sometimes someone say, especially when your kid, you don't want to do that. This passage has three major things where God says, you don't want to do that. You don't want to head there. That's not a direction you want to go because if you go there, you keep on that path, I will abandon you. So a few things here, A, B, and C, they're in your outline, seven A, B, and C, or one, two, and three. Okay, A, B, C, E, G, is one, two, three, all right, Jackson Fod, 1970. Here are three kinds of persons, three kinds of abandonment. There are three kinds of abandonment that people are experiencing today. Now one, for an elect person, for somebody who's truly saved, for somebody God is selected from the foundation before he created heaven in the earth, for somebody who is true seeing faith. For an elect person regenerated by God's Spirit, giving sin, seeing faith, any abandonment will only be for a time. Some of you went to our officers training and the Westminster Confessions talks about when a believer, a true believer walks in disobedience and does not heed the warnings of scripture or his pastor or elders or his brothers and sisters in Christ and keeps walking along in this wayward path that God for a time may turn that person over to the consequences of his own sins. As a loving father, if you've seen the movie, I think it's Amazon Produce Beautiful Boy, it's a true story by a freelance writer who wrote a lot through Rolling Stone and maybe Time Magazine, played by Steve Carell, and it's a true story he wrote about in the maybe in Rolling Stone or the New York Times about his son who got addicted to drugs. There's a point in this relationship, it's a wonderful movie but not if you don't want to be depressed. It's a tough, it's a really tough emotional movie, but there's a point in the movie where he has to turn his son over and not help his son anymore. This is on advice of counselors and people who deal with people with drug addiction that sometimes a person reaches a point where you have to turn them over, hand them over to the consequences of their own sins and their choices in hopes that they'll learn in that repensable time. For the true believer, this is the kind of a true believer can experience when they walk in sin, when they unconsciously disobey and walk away from the Lord. That God might abandon this person and it will be for a time. We know from the rest of the scripture that God didn't completely abandon his people and battle on. He brought them back to the Promised Land. He blessed them with Jesus, he included any of the Jews who wanted to follow Jesus including into the day by Jesus himself. So God is true to His covenant, but part of His covenant is not only Deuteronomy 28, the first part, which is the blessing to the covenant, but also the curses of the covenant. The God is a loving father, we'll discipline those who loves. And that's what Hebrews 12 is, Hebrews 12, 5 to 11 says, if God is your father and you're walking, apparently, he'll discipline you because what loving father doesn't discipline his children. But the good news of God disciplining us when we're wayward is that what the writer Hebrews says there is that there's this peaceful fruit of righteousness that comes from the hardship that we endure as discipline from the Lord. So the abandonment will be only for a time as fatherly disciplined for future good. So those who had fathers or mothers who punished us, you know, it said something like this hurts me more than you or something like that, there's much truth to that, if not total truth to that, they were doing this to train you to get you out of harmful habits that would bring you pain in your life. And so that can be one kind of abandonment, B, but for a person who's been in the church it's the second kind of person. A person who's been in the church but has never come to the place of admitting his sinfulness and need for God's forgiveness. In other words, a person who's been in the church but doesn't have a faith that saves, a faith that produces faithfulness and good works that's your blank there, James talks about in James 2, that a faith that saves, produces good works. It's not the good works that save, but true saving faith produces good works. I'm doing good things, I'm loving God well, I'm loving my neighbor well. So that abandonment comes with no promise, no promise of future good. If the person's not a believer, there's abandonments, even though the person's been in the church there can be abandonments apart from saving faith in which there's no promise that the person will ever come back to the church and experience the blessing of God. There could be a person who's abandoned for, you know, leaves the church not having been a believer but haven't been in the church for a while. They can leave the church and never come back and that lasts into eternity or they can come back into the church and be saved and a saving faith in Jesus, we just don't know. The last category of a person we can talk about is see those mostly outside the church but who consider themselves Christians by virtue of a childhood attendance in the church. So people who grew up, they kind of went to the church every so often but they never repented of their sins and believed in Jesus and it came to the Christ and said, I need your forgiveness for me but they consider themselves Christians by virtue of this, well, I've been in the church occasionally when I was growing up or by virtue of or common 20 years ago than today by virtue of being American, that's your second blank, of course I'm a Christian I'm an American, right? Now there's a lot more diversity or by virtue of not being an adherent to a different religion. Well, I'm not a Hindu, I'm not a Buddhist, I'm not an atheist, I believe God exists, yeah of course I'm a Christian and so that can be someone who experiences a abandonment, somebody who's not really a believer and just has some very, very, very loose association with the church in his past. So what is this passage to teach us about these things, D, D in your outline there, D period, God shows in this passage how, how a person, how a local church, how a denomination can assure themselves that God will not abandon them again, verse 13, that's what God's driving at when God speaks in this passage verses 12 and 13, this is what He's driving at, how can you assure yourselves, how can you quit yourself in a position where I'll never abandon you? So verse 13, crucial in this chapter, look there again, verse 13, God says, if you do all these things, I will live among the Israelites, I will live among you and will not abandon you. So how, here's our summary of all three things that God tells them, we're just going to hit one this morning, but I wanted you to cure all three from the start. So the summary, to have God not abandon me, that's your blank there, to have God not abandon you, you must care, three things to care about, God says, care about these things God said and will never abandon you, first thing, care about the church, care about the church, second thing, care about worshiping God, care about worshiping God, and third thing in this passage, I want to have Jesus in your life, care about having Jesus in your life, these are the three things that come out of this passage, if you want to be in a place where God is not abandoning you in this life and not abandoning you in eternity. So number one, looking at this first thing from our summary, God abandones those who don't care about his church, verses 12 and 13, God abandones those who don't care about his church, verses 12 and 13, and then again, the whole chapter is about this, the whole chapter is about the church, because A, here, we see the temple was with Solomon and the people of Israel were to care so much about, verse 12, God says to Solomon, ask for this temple you're building, if you follow my decrees, carry out my regulations and keep all my commands and obey them, all these things that we saw, all these commands and decrees and various things, and all these things about cubits, cubits are put in a half, if you're curious. So if you're dealing with two thirds, but you've got all these specifications, what kind of wood was to be used, what was it to be overlaid with, is it pine, is it cedar, gold here, and then on the cedar wood, on the sides and in the doors, you've got carvings of certain things, these are all got decrees and regulations about the temple, and God is saying, care about this Solomon, do this exactly the way I told you to, look at the last verse, it says in eight months the temple was finished in all its details according to its specifications, this is Solomon caring and the people caring about the temple, and this is why they prospered so much under Solomon, they were an exiled so 300, 400 years later, I mean this is at 966, we're dealing with Solomon when it starts the simple construction, 966, they wouldn't be exiled so about 600, so we're about 366 years off from being exiled, but right now in Solomon's lifetime, we've just read about how blessed the people were, it's because these are the kind of people they were, they cared about the temple, and they created this temple just as God said, they should, with all the measurements, making sure it was peaceful there, so they weren't clanging you know iron instruments there, they did all the work on the stones off the quarry, and we just quietly brought the stones into the temple, and they worked in a real peaceful environment there, but this is, the temple was with God and the people were to care about it, it's the whole, it's the whole chapter, all of chapter 12, now why, what does this have to do with us, next line in your outline? Today, the temple of God is the church, the temple of God is the church, so we see this in the 1 Corinthians 3, 16, it says the temple of God, you are the temple of God, because the spirit of God lives in you, King Paul says that to the church, but we saw in what Jim read to us from Ephesians 2, the first passage Jim read to us from Ephesians, it says, Christ Jesus is the cornerstone, and you are the building, you the church, she says to Ephesians there, are the building, Jesus is the cornerstone, the apostles, the New Testament, the prophets, the Old Testament are the foundation of the temple, but you're rebuilt, being built up as a holy temple of God, a place in which God dwells. Here that ties us here, the first king, six, the temple is where God dwells, when God says to his people there in verse 13, and I will live among you, it's like what he means is I live in the holy of Holy, in the temple, if you build this temple, I will live in it among you, and what Christ is doing the son of David, the new Solomon Jesus, the greater than Solomon King that we have, is he's building the temple which is us, and we're living stones and he dwells in us to bless us, and so when we say that Solomon, and the people really cared about the temple, and that's that broad about their blessing, today what it means is that we care about the temple of today, which is not a building of stones in physical Jerusalem, we care about the temple today, which is the church, we care about the church, and God says if you care about the church, the temple of God today, I will not abandon you, okay, if you start not caring about the church, that's one of those things where God says you don't you want to do that, you don't want to abandon abandon the church, the church is what I care about, so be in your outline there, this is not to say, this is not to say you are saved by caring for the church, that the Pharisees cared for the church so to speak, we won't see them in happen, just a couple of them who believed in Jesus, okay, but yeah, a lot of people can care about the church because it can be a place of a prominence or because they were made fun of other places and they don't get made fun of in the church or or they've never got a position of leadership out anywhere else, but they could get a position of leadership and a lot of people who like the church for for various reasons and we're not saying if you care about the church, that that will be your salvation, but you're saved by Jesus, it is to say, and that's a blank for you, it is to say, it is to say saved people care about the church, and if you start not to care about the church that's a red flag for your soul, say have I believed because God tells me saved people, people regenerated by the spirit, care about the church and they see the church as a blessing, a place where they want to be. So there are two aspects of caring for the temple of today, the church, two aspects, two ways or two aspects of the church that we care about. First, see, not caring about the temple means not caring about the church as an entity, practically about your local church as a whole, okay? So we want to care about the church as a whole and our local church, we want to have our heart and our mind there and care about it, but what or some ways this might be the case, one is if we don't have a local church, I hate to say if it's not all of you will be around here forever. I don't want to bury any of you and I don't want any of you ever to leave, but that always happens, right? So far, I hadn't had to bury anybody in the church here, a former person who's in the church here that did this funeral, but as it stands, you'll get a job someplace else and have to move or you'll go to move with kids or your parents or something like that and you'll head away and here's the thing that you want to have a church and so Trevor's here, he's military, my brother-in-law, Jeff, was in Iraq and he would get literally dropped in a city in the middle of the night. Helicopter came down and they knew they all were watching synchronized and they had what wasn't, like three and a half minutes to get back to the helicopter because that's how long it took the bad guys to realize what was going on. In a symbol and so they get out, they grab somebody on the bad guy list, this is, I don't know when this was, like 2006 or something like that and then they grabbed the guy, bring them, get them back on the helicopter and they'd be out. So here's the deal, when you go to a new town, it's like getting dropped down in that zone. Okay, you don't get acclimated. You're gonna say, hey, what's here, where are the good places to eat here? You get the job done and so when you land in a new place, when you get a new job in a new place, you know what, if you're in a big city, you search the internet and you get a maximum right of like seven churches. If you're having a smaller place, you're particularly about a church you like, you got like three. But even if you have seven, like we did when we were going to down to Orlando, there were seven churches we considered. We went to these seven churches, that's seven weeks, that's under two months, right? And then you can pick, even pick your top three and go a second time. But within three months, boom, you got a church and so that should be your mindset about a church. I always want to have a church to be part of a church because I care for the church, this is, this is what Jesus cares about. This is what Jesus said, I will build, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Jesus didn't say he was going to build anything else. He was going to build the church. So we want to have a local church. We read from Hebrews 10 verse 25 this morning and the writer of Hebrews says, let us not give up meeting together as summer and the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as we see the day of Jesus return approaching. First Corinthians 12 13 says, we were all baptized by one spirit into one body. So we care about the church because those are the other members of our body. Those are our other family members, our brothers and sisters, but also we're told in Hebrews there don't forsake the assembly of yourselves together. But we need, we need to be around each other to be encouraged as time goes on prior to Jesus return. So that's one thing caring about the church as a whole. Second thing, second thing is this. If you're in a church going every week but not exerting effort to make the church better and I couldn't ask for this there. So that's another thing we want to be concerned about. We want to be in the church and exerting effort because we care about the church to make it better. Here's the asterisk. If you're a new mom, we got it one new mom here. If you're a new mom or a mom of a bunch of little kids and you've got a life stuff going on where you right now have different obligations in your family that is good and godly to be taken care of as a mom or as a child of an elderly parent or that kind of thing and you just can't commit to certain regular ways of helping the church. You're the asterisk, okay? Don't kill yourself in your church effort. Be here and worship the Lord. Maybe you're in a time right now where you just can't help where you just can't exert your effort in a regular way in the church. But if that's not describing you guys, for most of us it's this. We're reading these passages in 1 Corinthians 12 at Ephesians 4. We read from this morning that we're all ligaments and parts of this body and we need to be functioning. If the runner has the right knee, not exerting effort, he falls on the first step. He falls on the first step. So a local church needs all his members to be exerting efforts. You see all this effort that goes out in this for us was kind of not all that exciting in chapter 6 because we don't have to build a temple. So we don't need to know how many cubits something was. We're never going to have to measure that on a on a plank consider. But what's been shown here is this is effort. This is seven years of effort. Can you imagine? Our house took 18 months to be built. We moved to a rental house and we lived there for a full year and people at our house have been built 18 months. Wow, this is seven years. A construction program that's seven, it's actually like seven and a half. Seven years here and Solomon's committed and the people are committed and they're just they're banging this thing out and they get it done and they rejoice. We'll see they're rejoicing in a couple of chapters here. But this is commitment to effort whatever way you can help whether if you're a cedar carver or you're a stone chiseler or you're somebody you just get the raw rocks out of the quarry whatever it is. But God says this is the thing that it's worthy of your life worthy of your effort to be a part of the temple of God that church being built up this place where God dwells by His Spirit as Ephesians 2 says. So if you're in a church going every week be exerting effort and another asterisk characteristic there is you know if you're in firm you know and going through stuff and just can't can't physically get to the church you know just join in on Facebook that kind of thing. So there's graciousness in that it's same but if you're able bodied and you're in a place you know just mentally state of state of well-being the church whatever church you're in needs you and whatever way you can you can help in whatever way they need they need to be helped. So verses 2 through 8 14 through 36 all these verses it's work work work work all the way down through these through these chapters and God says if you do this verse 12 if you commit yourselves to carrying out this work of building a temple to live among us and not abandon us that is here's a way to assure yourself that God will not abandon not only care for the church and be in a church but being exerting an effort with this goal as a church the temple of God being built up that'll be a way of you know sharing yourself of your your salvation if God blesses upon your life and you'll be blessed as you do as you do the work in the church Ephesians 4 12 says this Jim read it for us. God's people are all be doing works of service works of service so the body of Christ the church may be built up so the whole body grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work so Paul says in Ephesians 12 4 12 and 16. Now D D not caring about the temple means not caring about nor being with the people of the church in Hebrews 10 25 so one thing we want to be doing is always caring about the people first Corinthians 3 16 Ephesians 2 tells us where the temple so next line there for you since Christians Christians are the temple so the New Testament tells us Christians are the temple to care about the temple the care about the temple is to care about the people in the church so don't just care about the church and go into the church and getting a good message and worshiping and dashing out the document and kind of late and dashing out the door but care about the people interact being relationship with the people in the church caring caring about them Ephesians 4 32 the last verse Jim read to us from Ephesians says this be kind and compassionate to one another and one another is church people and that's where he's writing to the church in Ephesians this be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other just as Christ got in Christ for gave you first testimonies 4 9 puts our care for the people of the church in this way now about brotherly love we do not need to write you right into the church in Castelonica for you yourselves have been taught to love each other and in 5 11 there he says therefore encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you are doing first Peter 4 8 Peter puts it this way above all love each other deeply you see this this is caring about the church this has been all in not for seven years of simple building but this has been all in from here to the time you die and can talk to people who are in the church loving them showing them compassion you have to know them to know their pains to show them compassion right so it's been involved relation with the people in the church so that you can love them as Peter says love each other deeply and then again Hebrews 10 25 don't give up meeting together some are in the habit of doing so it's not just a today phenomenon but let us encourage one another let us encourage so we're to be around each other the list other people up to encourage them this is being committed to temple building being committed to the people who are the temple of God the church and then he likes Solomon notice this this is not just God saying hey you guys do this you should do this but we have to realize here like Solomon and even more so Jesus cared about the church he cared about the temple this is not God asking us to act in a way that Jesus didn't act it this is God saying God the Father just just be like my son Jesus who cared about the temple extravagantly greatly beyond cedar cedar smells good you know it's a rich wood beyond cedar beyond gold you know it's like everything out gold everywhere you know on the temple there and the Holy of Holy but but Jesus cared extravagantly about the church and so we're walking in his steps we're being Christ like when we care about the church when we care about the people of the church so like Solomon even more so Jesus cared about his church and God his Father did not abandon him this is shown for us in the gospel Jesus cared about the church and God did not abandon him so we'll talk about those two aspects the first aspect that Jesus cared about the church number one Jesus cared about the church and he gave his life for it everything he had he gave for the church that's how Jesus built the temple he gave everything he had he cut the stones in the quarry he chiseled he put that he cut the timber he carved the stuff he's the church builder right he's doing this through us just like God had done it through Solomon and people and people under Solomon there but Jesus cared about the church and gave his life for it and his people mark 10 25 it's the first verse in your declaration the gospel this morning Jesus said for even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many Jesus gave his life for the church he gave his life for you and me that we could be with him that he could dwell with us and us with him so Jesus is our example here he cared about the church he gave his life for it and so not many of us will be asked to give our lives for the church not many of us will be physical martyrs die for the church as many are in in various countries and in Africa and Asia and South America right now but number two Jesus caring for the church was not abandoned he was not abandoned to the grave by God his father Peter highlighted this in his first sermon about Jesus at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 and in verse 31 and it's the second part of our declaration the gospel this morning Peter writes he speaks of Jesus and he says this seen what was ahead David spoke of the resurrection of the Christ that he was not abandoned to the grave nor did his body see the can and this is the pattern for us those who care about the church God doesn't abandon those who even even Solomon laid in his life he's not doing well laid in his life he's not faithful laid in his life but even so God says but I won't split the kingdom while you're alive Solomon God does not abandon Solomon the Solomon it's done lots of bad stuff other times by the time he's done but God does not abandon those who are committed those who are committed to his people the church so f f here be committed to the church and it's people be committed to the church and it's people and this will assure you this will assure you one of the three things this will assure you of being God's being with you in this life and in the life to come so if if you're in a place here and saying you know one of these aspects here I'm not really doing like that I'm not in a church I'm in a church but I'm not really exerting any effort or I don't really care about the people I don't know the people that well any of these things here you know it's the like we always say it's the Obi-Wan the only good thing that happened in episode two is Obi-Wan saying you need to go home and rethink your life and that's what God's warning is here to his people who are an exile in Babylon he gives them the book of first kings in chapter six here and he says you guys need to go home and rethink your life you're an exile what did you do wrong what did your forefathers do wrong it was this they had a lifetime and generations as we'll read in first kings and you can read in second king they had generations who didn't give a rip about the temple who let it fall into disrepair who at times locked its doors and no one was going to who were worshiping other gods instead of going to the place where God there in the temple and so God says and gives us passage to us even today in our lives it says if this is not true of me where I love God's people where I love the church where I'm committed to it where I'm exerting my effort to it to build the temple like these people did for the seven years then I need to rethink my priorities in my life and this rethinking will be for my good but also my assurance for God's being with me here in this life but also that I will be with him in all eternity heaven is full of people who cared for the temple heaven is full of people who cared for the church so are some are some are to have God not abandon me I am to be a person who cares who cares about the church two more things upcoming but man it was a lot of a lot of stuff this is a hard one to wrangle with this week because there's so much information in it even though we're not talking about cubits too much but God said to us and gives us this good assurance hey you care about the church and you put your effort out in the church you care about the people in church and keep going that's great do that um this is that's the kind of person God delights to dwell with and bless let's pray I've gotten father we are a glad that you dwell with your people and that you dwell with your people in Old Testament times in the temple that's what David and Solomon were so excited and inserted so much effort for the temple to be built so that you would dwell with them so cause us to have that same attitude as these two and even more causes to have the attitude of Jesus who was so excited and committed to the temple of God being built up us the church that he died for the temple to exist to happen and to be built up thank you for the forgiveness that you have given us in that death that Jesus gave in that life of his that he gave for the temple thank you that we can be living stones in your temple because of him because the life and the forgiveness that he's given us caused us to emulate him in our commitment to your people and to your great institution on this earth the church to pray that Father in Christ name