Monthly Archives: February 2012

. . . I looked, and behold, a door standing open

25 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by in Ekklesia

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Allow me for a moment to challenge your perspective, your concept, your understanding of the word “church.”

For most people, “church” has come to mean a building, a denomination, or a program. I believe God has something else, something greater in mind when He uses the word.

A while back God began to speak to me about changes that the church needed to make if His followers were to make a significant difference in the world around us.

As my understanding of those changes developed, the Holy Spirit brought a truth to my heart that I didn’t fully comprehend: He illuminated this statement: “The door to the future is in the past.” Immediately I thought of the church of the Book of the Acts. That’s what we often refer to when we talk about a true, New Testament church. We examine Acts 2:42-47 to discover the ingredients of that church and try to apply them to our own experience and then wonder what we’re doing wrong when we don’t see three thousand or five thousand people born into the Kingdom in our meetings.

Part of the reason we can’t find the success we seek is that we tend to look for patterns to follow. We want systems and programs, concise equations whereby if we do “A” “B” and “C,” we will get “D.” There are church groups that instruct leaders to “Develop a first class children’s program, find talented musicians and preach no more than fifteen minutes on positive subjects and your church will grow.”

Unfortunately and all too often, our definition of “growth” differs greatly from God’s meaning. God cannot be reduced to a formula or a recipe. If the church is truly His church, it follows that “church” cannot be reduced to simple, repeatable formulae. Church historians know this: What worked for one generation didn’t work for the next generation. Look at the record of the church: Each generation was required to find God for themselves and to discover His direction and to hear His voice for themselves and for their unique generation.

As I contemplated that statement – “The door to your future is in the past” I asked God for understanding. He said, “Go back to Genesis.” I turned to Genesis chapter one and read,

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. (Gen. 1:1-3).

Allow a brief commentary: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” All that exists around us, every law and principle that provides the material and spiritual to exist were created by God. Man had nothing to do with any law, principle, truth or reality that enables the physical world to function. All things, everything existent was made by God without the assistance and before the existence, even of man.

“The earth was without form and void . . .” In order for God to “rebirth” or “restore” His church, we must come to a place of complete and total reliance upon Him. Any idea we have, any vision or concept of what the church is must issue directly from God and not from our own experience, education, or from our own minds or souls.

God must be the solitary source of direction, counsel, instruction and illumination if His church will indeed be the church Jesus said He would build. We must offer ourselves to Him “without form and void.” This is critical for us to understand: “without form,” and “void.” Empty of our ideas, empty of our theories and models, without any preconceived concept of what the church must look like, where it will meet, when it will meet, how it will meet. These are all assumptions and notions that we received, were handed down to us by former generations. It’s the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality that so often conflicts with the purposes and direction of a mysterious and creative God.

We have seldom emptied ourselves of ourselves, choosing rather to fill ourselves with ideas, schemes, plans and efforts that have only failed, disappointed and discouraged.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters . . .” It is the illumination and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that gives life. We have relied on supposedly “tried and true” methodologies; we have learned from the examples of previous generations; we have absorbed the teaching of college and seminary professors but we have so seldom emptied ourselves of ourselves, regarded all our earthly understanding and learning as “dung” and with the Apostle Paul declare “this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Then God said, Let there be light; and there was light. “Then God said…” it is up to the Father and His timetable to determine the “Then” moment of time when we will understand the nature, the structure and even the purposes of His church, this “New Wineskin” of which Jesus spoke.

We cannot determine the timing of any eternal thing; we can only move when heaven’s timepiece chimes. “Then God said, “Let there be light . . .”  Only when God reveals the light are we able to see. There is no artificial light source; no earthly beacon can shed light on and uncover what cannot otherwise be seen. Until God turns on the light, there is darkness in the house. But when God speaks, light appears; understanding comes; comprehension is made easy.

God does not cooperate with pseudo-church forms, the unsanctified bastions of religion and the ungodly mixing of the fleshly with the spiritual.

We are moving into a new, unexplored realm of experience in Jesus and in the church. God is not finished with the church, but He is finishing with His cooperation with pseudo-church, the unsanctified bastions of religion and the mixing of the fleshly with the spiritual. He is not only demanding, He is enabling a generation to “come out from among them and be separate” and to inhabit and comprise “a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”

This is the church that is emerging from the counsels of heaven; this is the church of the Latter Rain, the Temple more glorious, the church of the living God against whom the gates of hell cannot not prevail.

God is calling out His people; a committed remnant that desire more than a religious atmosphere and high, holy-sounding rhetoric. God is assembling an army of warriors who will storm hell’s gates and prevail against all of the enemy’s schemes. Heaven is sounding the trumpet call for volunteers to join that army and become the church that will stand faultless around His throne, a Bride adorned for her Groom, Jesus.

The doorway to the future is in our past, all the way back to the beginning, the Genesis of it all.

How Did His Church Become My Church?

25 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by in Ekklesia

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How did His Church Become My Church?

“There are approximately 38,000 Christian denominations in the world.”

                                    (Christianity Today – General Statistics and Facts of Christianity Today, 2001).

* (Update: As of 2009, eight years after the CT study, more than 43,000 denominations have been identified).

Does this statistic bother you?

We so easily miss truth by way of our assumptions, our faulty perceptions, our beloved traditions. “We’ve always done it this way” is no excuse for error in our behavioral patterns. “We’ve never done it that way” is no justification of wrong-minded “rut” living

Have you considered that the word “Church” as used by Jesus and “Church” (as a descriptive experience) may not be the same? Indeed, they may be completely unrelated!

Jesus said, “I will build My Church and the gates of hell will not prevail . . .” We routinely reveal our error in understanding when we make statements such as,

“Are you going to church on Sunday?”

“Where do you go to church?”

“How do you do church?”

Jesus said, “I will build My church.” He did not say “I will build a school or an entertainment center, a business enterprise, a social gathering place, a nesting place for ‘birds of a feather to flock together.’”

What did Jesus have to say about church attendance? What did He say about “orders of service” and times of service and frequency of services and pastoral personalities and preaching styles and music preferences and, for crying out loud, the acceptable color and pattern of the carpet?

What did Jesus say about doctrinal distinctions and denominational differences and modes of baptism and understandings of communion? Or should we refer to the Lord’s Supper as the Eucharist? Did Jesus introduce the liturgy that so many view as sacred, proper, essential? Was it Divine genius that gave us homiletics 101?

What about “church growth” schemes? What did Jesus say about these? Was the Lord of glory the Originator of the Church Conference? Did the Savior introduce the Convention, the Congress, the Summit or the Seminar? Did He initiate the Saturday night “Prayer Hour?”

Was it Jesus Who suggested taping a Denarius, or in a rich neighborhood, an Aureus on the underside of a seat, to be won by the lucky worshiper who chose that moneyed seat?

Where did the term “Do Church” originate?

What makes one building a “church” and another a manufacturing plant? What makes one structure a sanctuary and another a dispenser of latte’s and pastries?

Did Jesus intend our Sunday-go-to-meeting duds should be different than our Monday-go-to-work attire? What chapter and verse in the gospels delineates a shopping mall for religious trinkets, “Christian” music and “Christian” books and “Christian” refrigerator magnets? Or perhaps it is Pauline theology that bears responsibility for the “Christian” financial enterprise that converts merchandise for millions of dollars each and every year that we await the rapture of the church.

I think we may have, somewhere along a long line of “doing” confused our being with performance, achievement, a “holy” but not wholly godly routine. Somehow, I think the “exploits” of Hebrews 11 and of the Acts of the Apostles have been largely lost beneath the sheer weight of a good-mindedness that is not necessarily God-mindedness. Our faulty definitions have displaced original intention and the simplicity of our watching, our cooperating, as Jesus simply, straightforwardly and miraculously, builds “His church.”

Acts 28, beginning in verse number 30 gives us a wonderful portrayal of the intention of Jesus in building: “For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.”

And he did it all, away from the synagogue, away from the crowds, without benefit of the limelight or the fawning groupies or the wild and raucous cheering section, all the while being held prisoner of the government of Rome. No, Paul wouldn’t “fly” in today’s religio-centric church, he was far too unconventional, too controversial, too “small time potatoes” for modern churchmen.

Jesus said, “I will build My church.” Oh, hey, I just noticed: “My” church, indicating possession, custody, ownership, control, proprietorship; “My” church

One of the first words learned by every toddler, beyond, “mama” and “dada” is “Mine!” It seems that we come from our Manufacturer uniquely equipped to issue that explanation to all in our world – “Mine!” And we carry that sense of domination and control and ownership into our concepts of church: Far, too many expressions of “church” are “mine” in either the collective or the individual sense. We’ve all heard it, “Have you attended Smith’s church?” Or, “What do you think of the __________________ (you fill in the denominational label) church?” Or, “This is my church.”

The songwriter penned the words, “What’s love got to do with it, do with it, do with it?” It seems that modern “churchites” have their own version: “What’s HE got to do with it, do with it, do with it?”

The Issue of “Issues”

24 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Discipleship

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From the first blush of the New Day that dawned following the Cross Event and the rising again from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth, the world began to feel the explosive effect of an entity unknown to any previous generation of men upon the earth.

The promise Jesus had made to a handful of seemingly unqualified men at Caesarea Philippi had begun to be realized. He had said on that day, “I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

If we were reading an epic and sweeping novel, we would anticipate a church joined together in common purpose by the Denominator of Christ, a church of agreement and harmony, a church walking in unified purpose and resolve.

That was not the case. Even from her first moments and initial meetings together, the newly born church at Jerusalem was afflicted by disunity. Fellow believers, brothers and sisters in Jesus did not see every issue, view every doctrine eye to eye.

Sadly, and to the sabotage of her success, the church has failed to find and to live within the fair boundaries of unity for all of her existence. Yet this very issue – unity – was, and continues to be a central desire and prayer of Jesus.

The existence of some 40 or more thousand Christian denominations should tell us something about unity and disunity, agreement and disagreement. If in fact there is legitimate need for tens of thousands of Christian denominations, so-called, it is indicative of the failure of Christian people to truly love one another, accept and receive one another in a spirit of grace and forbearance in Christ.

Consider the holy prayer, spoken by the holy Son of God, in cloistered communion with the Father. The words are recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John’s gospel:

“ . . . that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

Since the whole theme of unity is key to the king of glory and to the church of His building, we need often to examine our own hearts and minds in the light of Jesus’ high priestly prayer on our behalf.

Paul devotes two full chapters to the issue of “issues.” He repeats himself, writing in chapter 14, Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things and in 15, We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak, and not to please ourselves.

The Key to becoming like-minded when there are differences of belief, opinion, and understanding is found in 14:5 Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. One version has this: follow the convictions of conscience. The Living Translation says Each person should have a personal conviction about this matter. The responsibility is on the individual believer.

The key to finding agreement is not in the voracious study of every commentary until a suitable (to us) meaning is discovered about these things” or to parse the Greek until a unique understanding is found, but the key is to be fully persuaded, to follow your convictions. There must be the component of faith that involves itself within us if we are to gain understanding, find knowledge, and walk out our faith in Him.

Shakespeare’s Polonius memorably advises his son, Laertes, This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

Consider these words of Paul: (Romans 14:5) “One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind.”

(14:14-16) “I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. 15 Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food the one for whom Christ died. 16 Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil.”

(15:5-8) Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, 6 that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God. 8 Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers,

There are issues that seem to be spiritual, that are almost important that in reality amount to nothing in the eternal heart of God. It is a complete and destructive waste of time to debate topics that have no practical, helpful and eternal value.

Allow me to repeat myself: “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” Paul is dealing with dietary issues (that have little application in the 21st century, but are instructive in principal to our lives) and now writes about calendar observances (which also have little, literal application to us, but serve to provide philosophical instruction).

We have our problems, our disputes over eschatological calendarizations – Some of us are convinced that Jesus will appear the second time before the time of the Great Tribulation while others are convinced He will arrive in the middle of Tribulation and others are fully persuaded that His arrival will follow The Tribulation. Still others teach that He will not return at all, and there are those who teach that He will return, but there will be no Tribulation.

It is a waste of precious and irretrievable time to argue and to postulate about which day of which week and of which hour of that day or night Jesus will return for His Bride.

When we think about the Day of the Lord and of the catching away of the church, the “rapture,” (a word that does not even appear in our Bibles) the objective ought not be first to discern the moment of His return, but to know He is coming again and to “work while it is day” because as surely as Summer follows the Spring, “the night cometh when no man can work.”

Paul is not, in Romans 14 speaking about specific, isolated questions of the application of faith so much as he intends to use the questions of proper food and the observance of days to address a whole panoply of potentially divisive issues – The church at Rome had their own slate of problems, and we have ours.

Here is only a sample of today’s issues that divide brothers and sisters, denominations and churches . . . the collective Body of Christ in the earth:

Eschatology, Losing one’s salvation, The Eucharist, Dietary Laws, Alcohol, Dancing, Movies, The Sabbath, Celebration of Christmas, Military Service and War, Politics, Tongues, Miracles, Prophecy, Worship, Ecology . . .

And the list could go on and on. This is only an incomplete list. A plethora of issues could easily apply to Paul’s advice. Issue upon issue, world without end could marshal our time and energies. We could immerse ourselves to the point of drowning if we so chose, but believers in Christ should focus their faith and their energies – should “major on majors and minor on minors” with regard to many of the unanswered and debatable questions that surround our faith.

A “first law” of dealing with the “issue of issues” ought to be that love must have preeminence. Our first objective must be first to love and secondly to be persuaded. If our persuasion rises from a foundation of love, the conclusion of our determinations will be far more palatable to God and to man.

If our persuasion comes first and if love comes second, we already are in error, and we do harm both to our own testimony and to the Body of Christ.

Paul’s response to a divisive Roman church embraces at least three simple points – considerations that are intended to be uncomplicated and easy to both recall and to employ.

In Chapter 14:3 he cautions about passing judgment on a brother (or sisters) in “such things.” The intent of his “such things” is to evoke the “non-essential” things.

His reasoning for prohibiting judgment is that God has received (our brother or sister). If a person is justified by faith, we are obligated to receive, to welcome that person even if we may disagree with issues that are non-essentials to the faith. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” “Allow your brother and sister to be fully persuaded in his or her own mind of God’s position on every issue.” Allow them because God has received them.

If a believer has gone before God in honesty and has cleared any given issue with God, whether it be the consumption of shellfish (a great sin to some in the Body) to drinking wine (a definite sin to Christians living on one side of the Atlantic Ocean, but an acceptable practice to Christians living on the other side of the Atlantic – One wonders what happens to the wine somewhere out in the Atlantic?) if that issue has been cleared with God and the believer has a clear conscience regarding such things, we should, we must receive them, even if it means we don’t share their shrimp or drink their Chardonnay.

If a person is made righteous and is accepted by God, as a son or daughter of the Father, we must also reckon God’s righteousness and His acceptance of a brother as sufficient for us.

Paul continues to expand his view in verse 4 when he asks, “Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed he will be made to stand for God is able to make him stand. (Italics, mine).

Paul’s second observation is that our brother will give an account of his life before God, and not before you or me. We too frequently judge according to our preferences and not according to God’s standards.

When we look at the manner of life of another believer and when we judge that one as less spiritual than are we, we violate God’s word and place ourselves at the judgment bar, wearing the wrong robes! I want to be found by Him, clothed in robes of righteousness rather than having donned the Judges robe that is tailored for only One Magistrate!

Rest assured, there will be an accounting day; a day of reckoning when either our thin excuses or our righteous judgments will be brought into balance by the Chief Justice of heaven.  God will judge the vegetarian and the meat eater, and the exact, same standard will be used for us all.

Finally, in the same verse Paul writes, God will make us able to stand in the judgment. The differences of interpretation, opinion, persuasion on issues that are non-essential to our faith will not crush us on the day of our eternal adjudication.

God will as He ever has intervened on our behalf make up for all our miscalculations of life’s issues.

Paul instructs us: “Don’t Judge,” because God has accepted our brother/sister. “Don’t Judge” because our brother/sister will stand before God for judgment. “Don’t Judge” because where we are deficient, He is sufficient. Where we don’t have quite enough or the Admission Price, He has already paid for our entry into His glory and His presence for eternity.

Instead of judging, our goal is to “be fully persuaded” in our own minds that the manner of our own lives, and not the manner of a brother/sister’s life, that all our own behaviors and practices are supported by and are pleasing to God.

Because the day will come when you and I will surely give an account. God will not ask for a single witness either for the prosecution or the defense. He alone will judge us all, and His standard will be absolutely perfect, pure and just.

And where each of us has lack, where we did not get it right, where we misinterpreted a doctrinal issue, He will make up the difference for us through the abundant resource of His only begotten Son, and He will make us to stand on that day!

Love,

Greg

” . . . Who Loves to Have the Preeminence”

24 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Apostolic

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“Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves,”

 “And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them”   (Genesis 11:4,6).

 “ . . . let us build ourselves a city . . . that reaches into heaven.”

“ . . . let us make a name for ourselves.”

These two, “let us build” and “let us make” are interrelated, interconnected, and nourish one another with a poison that kills the soul as surely as does the fruit of the Hemlock that stilled the heart of Socrates.

The Flesh, the Greek’s sarkikos, the carnal, animal nature of man – the ego, self-seeking, self-serving pride, arrogance, the craving for self-importance, the need for adulation and the praise of men reveals itself in the voracious need to ‘build.’

It is the unredeemed, unsanctified ‘self’ that demands recognition; that presses itself into the bright light of public notice.

Mark those who clamor for attention; who need to be heard, noticed, seen, to be ‘first.’

John the Beloved forever marked Diotrephes, “who loves to have the preeminence.” His malicious words “prated against” authentic followers of Christ. “Who loves to have the preeminence.” The Message informs us “who loves being in charge.” Mark those among us who are always clamoring for attention, who manifest an inordinate need to make noise, to be heard, to be seen, to be “first.”

Jesus both counseled and modeled the truth that “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”

Diotrephes is the prototype of those among us who are ambitious, proud, disrespectful of apostolic integrity, rebellious and inhospitable – they love to have the preeminence, to dominate, to be seen as superior, to “have the rule” among us, to build something, anything that reflects their self-generated and self-assumed importance.

This craving to build is an accurate reflection of a deficiency of the soul and of a barrenness of the heart. Indeed, a heart made happy, one that is satisfied by the simple presence of the indwelling Christ is one that needs to build nothing at all, to advance nothing, to achieve nothing, finding itself satisfied that the Savior has achieved for us every needful thing.

John’s direction regarding the kind of self-promotion and egotism represented by Diotrephes is pointed: “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good.”

Observe the correlation between religious arrogance and religious efforts that focus on and center on building.

Whether it is to build a bigger, more splendid edifice “for worship” or to build a larger donor base or to build the largest Facebook following, the blatant and insatiable need to build (or to broadcast or to publish or to become the most prominent name on the Conference Circuit) reveals an inner absence of godly satisfaction, godly character, emptiness of soul, and of stark, spiritual poverty.

The drive to build is in utter contrast to the extent that we are led by the Spirit.

When we are led by the Spirit, we will no longer be driven to fulfill the lusts of the flesh to create something significant, to build, to construct something, anything that would make ourselves known, to become famous, to be identified.

Our identity and our identification must issue from a single Source: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Italics for emphasis, mine).

It is “Christ in me, the hope of glory” and not “me in Christ, the hope of any glory.” It is “Christ in me,” overwhelming the “me” portion of me, the “I” part of me, it is “Christ” Who deserves attention, notice, adoration.

Even Jesus, the eternal Logos, the very Son of God “made Himself of no reputation” and took the form and spirit of servitude when He appeared among us.

Paul’s greatest desire was not for fame or for a memorial by which to be remembered, but it was “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”

It was he who wrote, “God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

To the degree that we lack His identity, we are plagued by the incessant demand to build.

To the degree that we lack His identity, to the degree that we have not become “lost” in Him, we will be plagued by the demanding devil that suggests, that harangues, that requires that we “build.”

And so, the stimulus behind “let us build” is often, “let us make a name for ourselves.”

When Nimrod’s builders declared their intention to “make a name for ourselves” it was far more than a simple desire for a recognizable identification.

The issue of “names” is of serious note. “The Name,” the Hebrew “Ha-Shem” is esteemed to be holy, so revered, that faithful Jews have been prohibited against uttering it in public discourse. History has long since buried the correct pronunciation of “Ha-Shem” and some merely use, YHWH.

In the Jewish mind, a name is more than arbitrary designation, random combinations of vowel and consonant.

The Western mind determines a child’s name to honor a grandparent or because expectant parents like the sound of a certain name. It is not so in Jewish thought.

To the Jew, the name conveys the nature and essence of the thing named. It represents the history and reputation of the person named.

When Moses inquires of God in Exodus 3, he asked, “when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”

Moses does not asking “what will You be called,” but “Who are You; what are You, and what have You done?”

The yearning to make a name, to exalt one’s reputation has a blasphemous root. It bears all the foul odor of the rebellion of Lucifer, who Isaiah identifies as the one who “said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’

“Let us build.” “Let us make a name for ourselves.” These must bow in the presence of the One who alone will ‘build’ and Whose Name alone is worthy to be known.

Of this we can be assured, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

If there is any building among us, let it be the building of the Lord. If there is any exalted Name, let it be Christ Jesus, the Lord, “to the glory of God the Father” because “God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name.”

Not every building is the result of sin. Not every construction program is commenced in corruption. Jesus promised that He would build His church. He counseled that the wise man will “build his house on the rock.” (Observe that in both these instances, when Jesus uses “build,” He also speaks of a rock).

There is a building that is godly, worthwhile and eternal, but “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build.”

There is a name that is worthy and eternal, and that Name is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God.