Again, we think in terms of the beauty of how the Holy Spirit is at working our lives and directing and leading and prompting us and how He gives us with various unique ministries and fills our lives with gifts and abilities. We look at some of that manifested in the Old Testament concept that much of that was centered around how God brought all these people together to bring about a meeting place for Himself in the temple. And a lot of those same kinds of concepts and principles are what lays the foundation for how we learn to recognize the holiness of God's Spirit and how we can work particularly in a ministry of building, not simply a physical building called the temple, but your life and mind being temples of the Holy Spirit. First Chronicles chapter 28, one to begin with verse 1 and read down through verse 10.
Now David summoned all the officials of Israel to assemble that Jerusalem. The officers over the tribes, the commanders of the divisions in the service of the king. The commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds and the officials in charge of all the property and livestock belonging to the king and his sons. Together with the palace officials, the mighty men and all the brave warriors, King David rose to his feet and he said, listen to me, my brothers and my people.
I have had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, for the footstool of our God. And I have made plans to build it. But God said to me, you are not to build a house for my name because you are a warrior and have shed blood. Yet the Lord, the God of Israel, chose me from my whole family to be king over Israel forever.
He chose Judah as leader and from the house of Judah, he chose my family. And from my father's sons, he was pleased to make me king over all Israel. Of all my sons and the Lord has given me many, he has chosen my son Solomon to sit on the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel. He said to me, Solomon, your son is the one who will build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be my son and I will be his father.
I will establish his kingdom forever if he is unswerving and carrying out my commands and laws as is being done at this time. So now I charge you in the sight of all Israel and of the assembly of the Lord and in the hearing of our God, be careful. Be careful to follow all the commands of the Lord your God that you may possess this good land and pass it on as an inheritance to your descendants forever. And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father and serve him with whole hearted devotion and with a willing mind.
For the Lord searches every heart and he understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. Consider now for the Lord has chosen you to build a temple as a sanctuary, be strong and do the work. Follow me pause before you because we recognize that in all of the truths that you have preserved for us, we need discernment.
We need wisdom, we need guidance. We need your Holy Spirit's instruction to understand and to interpret, but especially to apply. We pray, O God, as you lead and direct and have always led and direct your people, we pray that through a greater understanding of truths. We might be able to affirm and confirm even more accurately the things that you intend to say to us.
We pray, O God, as you continue to work in our lives and we go about our various lives. One day at a time, wherever we go, we pray, that we might recognize that your presence in us is not only a cherished blessing on Sunday, but it sure is a cherished blessing as we go about our various lives. We pray, O God, that you're anointing will not only rest upon us when we gather together as a people, but may you're anointing, lead and direct us to each and every day. We praise you, O God, as you have sent us out to be a people, as we go to minister to where we are, wherever you lead us, wherever you connect us with people, whatever your purpose and plan is.
We pray that your sweet spirit would lead us and work through us in Jesus' holy name. We mentioned as we look in scriptures as well aware to probably most all of us, that there is a temple which has always been considered to be sacred to God, just as there is a church which is sacred to God's Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And we can see clearly throughout the scriptures that there's a connection between the old and the new and what seemed to be emphasized as precious in its simple form in the Old Testament, certainly becomes precious in its more beautiful aspects as the church unfolds and becomes all that Christ intended it to be. The glory of the temple is also equivalent to the glory of the church, and the assurance of God's blessing in favor is how you and I respond to the things that God has determined to be considered sacred and holy.
And so even so, the glory of the church and his spirit at work in our lives is associated with him, that assurance of God's favor and blessing as we walk in obedience to the teachings of commands and the calling that Christ has placed upon our lives. God created and designed each and every one of us in such a way that we can truly know God personally and experientially. And because of Jesus Christ and what he has come to do, we can know God personally, but we can also experience him in a very practical way. Jesus revealed the heart of God, and through everything that Jesus taught, we also can experience the mind of God.
That's something that seems to be particularly highlighted as we move on through the New Testament, is the very thoughts of God have been shared with you and I. As God has attempted to communicate, not only his heart, he also clearly communicates his mind and the thoughts in which he has for us. Most of us are quite familiar with the beauty of God's power and grace in transforming our hearts, yet some may not be as familiar with the blessing of how God truly transforms the mind. For those of us who receive and believe the Spirit's leading in our lives, we become acquainted with God's power to fill our hearts and to motivate us and to speak into our hearts in so many ways.
It is just as important as we consider these scriptures and others that we humbly understand the potential work of the Holy Spirit when our minds are connected with the mind of Jesus Christ. Much of our creativity, much of our giftedness, much of our ways in which we serve people and minister to others comes because God speaks into the mind. He may move our hearts and compel us to reach out, but the mind is when the thoughts of God can be transferred into the thoughts of people, how the thoughts of God and the teachings of God can be transferred into hands and feet in some very practical and personal ways. Let's look again at 1 Chronicles, chapter 28, verses 9 and 10 as we begin to jump into this because the premise I want to touch upon and try to work through is an understanding that when we think of terms of ministering, we think of terms of various gifts that God has given us to help and minister to other people, we know that if our thoughts about God's gifts are limited to Sunday morning, they will definitely look different than if we consider the fact that the Holy Spirit's movement and gifts are to be used on Monday through Saturday, an entirely different concept.
The same can be said about the fact that when we think about the working of the Holy Spirit to simply be in an issue of the heart, it's definitely going to look different than the Holy Spirit at work in our minds. As we allow our minds to be available to the leading of God's Spirit and we allow the giftedness of the creativity of those gifts that God has blessed you with. They put to work in using of our minds, it's going to work itself out so differently. In the Old Testament, it was clear to many of the gifted people that built the temple that they understood it was a gift of God for their ability to create.
It was also a gift back to God to put the quality of their workmanship into place and create something of such beauty and elaborate fashion committed to the God. To God, many of them, even in America, there were many years in which churches were offering to God. People believed in God meeting with them in buildings and there were many built, whether they are Catholic or whether they are Protestant or what they are, that these buildings were an elaborate expression of a creative mind that God had gifted people with all to the glory of God. The sad thing as history continues to go on is sometimes that commitment of devotion to excellence and quality gets substituted with worshiping the buildings instead of the God who has come to that.
But those expressions truly are of a devotion and dedication. We need to understand the beauty of how to recapture that creative mind that God has given us and give it back to God in ministering to the lives of people all around us in so many different ways. Another kind of beautiful gift expressed through the mind tied together with compassion is the fact that most every single hospital at some point in the history of our world was established by people who had a mind to think about how God could use them to minister to the hurts and the struggles and the broken things of life. Every incredible mission field has a type of compassion that they take the best of their minds, the excellence of their devotion, and they take the gifts that God has given them and they use them in a practical and tangible way to minister to the world around.
Let's jump down to 1 Chronicles 28 verses 9 and 10. Once again, the challenge that David speaks to his son Solomon is in verse 9. And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your Father and serve him wholeheartedly with devotion and a willing mind. For the Lord searches every heart and he understands every moat to behind the thoughts.
If you seek him, it will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. Consider now for the Lord has chosen you to build a temple as a sanctuary. Be strong and do the work. Drop down to verse 19.
All this David said, I have in writing from the hand of the Lord upon me. And he gave me understanding in all the details of the plan. It's a beautiful connection where we tie together the creativity of a man whose heart is right with God. And in that creativity, God has entrusted to him in writing the details of the temple.
Many times we might struggle, how did that take place? I mean, how was it's format? How did David discover this? Moses seemingly is given the same instruction.
When you build the temple, make sure it's everything in detail according to the true one that is up in heaven. The point is that God has not only impressed upon the hearts of people to respond to him and be available to him and serve him with great passion or whole heartedness. But God also uses the mind. He begins to speak into our minds.
He begins to grant us wisdom. He gives us insight. He gives us discernment. He gives us understanding so that mind can be used in the work of God's spirit.
When we think in terms of the concept of the mind, we must understand that that same kind of truth and principle is applied in the New Testament. I realize when we take sort of a jump ahead, we move from an Old Testament kind of view of how the Holy Spirit worked and we jump into the New Testament, we tend to possibly enter a concept that the brain isn't so valuable when we get to the New Testament because the Holy Spirit does all the thinking for us. Well, let's jump ahead and look at this as we look into First Corinthians and we want to look at chapter two. First Corinthians, chapter two.
First Corinthians, chapter two. Notice in verse four and five because this is typically where some of the transitions begin to shift around as we think in terms of the concept of a spirit of God moving and him being our teacher, instructor, or a revealer. He's the one that leads us and gives us direction and discernment in life. The Apostle calls us, my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with demonstration of the spirit's power.
Some would translate that or interpret that concept. As Paul didn't use his head, he simply was prompted by the spirit. So in verse five, so that your faith would not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power, notice in verse six. What he's talking about is a corruption of people using their mind and power because they were looking, Greeks were known for their desire for intellect, the Jews were known for their evidence of miracles.
And Paul is taking the Greeks wanting information information, the Jews wanting miracles, miracles, miracles. Paul says both of those will get us into trouble. Now he notices in verse six, he says, but we do however speak a message of wisdom. That almost seems like a contradiction.
And here's the point we want to look at in 1 Corinthians chapter two, is a mind that's committed to Christ, that's different than a mind that's committed to simply being intellectually smart. A mind that is committed to the leading of the Holy Spirit is a mind that God could take and he could shape it and transform it and use it in amazingly powerful ways. The ministries outside of the four walls of the church need a kind of creativity. I found myself after looking through this and trying to prepare even this morning, that I'm on my way to church and I realize I'm passing a flea market down there in the lead.
And I realize, you know, all these people ought to be up here in church and I got to be thinking, I said, shame on me. What if we as a church tried to figure out how to go to the flea market? See, it's a whole different concept, it's a whole different twist. We can race through that or we can creatively say, Lord, in my mind, I want my mind to be set apart to build your temple.
I want your church to rise in a unique way and somehow help me God to discover the beauty of realizing in the creativity of God, we must continue to move in ways that take us beyond simply a concept that holds us down and pushes us in and squeezes us. Now, I'm certainly not endorsing that the rest of you take off next Sunday to go to the flea market and say, I'm in there for Jesus. You know, but I give you permission to understand, Lord, what are you truly trying to say? Because I've been pre-programmed to say, the good seats are not only the church, the better seats are in the front row.
And somehow we develop these ideas of the way God works and the way God speaks and where God begins to manifest and operate. The whole point is, the Holy Spirit has been granted to us. He's given us passions for ministry, a kind of passion for people. The ultimate desire is that we take what God has given us and try to understand how it is used on Monday.
Now, the flea market happens to be on Sunday, so I'm free. Now, the purpose is, have we lost the creativity to think, God, what do you really want me to do? How can I be used of you? How can I be sent?
How can I be involved in allowing those gifts to be more than simply what happens within the confines of the church? But how are they released into the world around us? We'll get back to the wisdom. In verse Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 6, we notice there is a wisdom, and that wisdom is yours in mind.
That wisdom is the Holy Spirit at work. He has given us a wisdom. It's not like the wisdom of the world. The wisdom of the world constantly is trying to figure out how to shuffle all the cards and make everybody happy and make everybody feel good.
And it has this appearance of profound wisdom. We've all worked at workplaces when they come up with a new policy, a new agenda, a new thing. And everybody's like, wow, this is great wisdom. And anyone who's a Christian says, really?
That's been tried a thousand times over. Really isn't that brilliant. It's not that great. And it's not really the answer to the problem.
The answer to the problem is what God can give and speak to us. There's a wisdom that is among the mature, but not the wisdom of the age or the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom. It's a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
None of the rulers of this age understood it for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him, no first ten. But God has revealed to us by his spirit. I trust that we're a people.
And we not only want to allow our hearts to be transformed as we continue to move into maturity, but we want that kind of wisdom. Many of the gifts expressed and communicated about the gifts in the New Testament have something to do with discernment, wisdom, knowledge, or whatever kinds of revealed truth that God has for us. And you and I must recognize the beauty of God revealing himself for a purpose in which you and I can minister to people all through this world. We are in a wisdom vacuum of time, particularly within our generation.
We have the knowledge about how to explain all the problems of life. And if you've ever read a whole lot of psychology books and a whole lot of issues that talk about the complexity of what our world is struggling with. And we become masters explaining the problem, but the wisdom and the solution is now. God wants to impart to his church.
He wants to graciously speak into our lives to enable us to understand the wisdom to set people free, and that truth comes. He's revealed it to us by his spirit. Now we say, well, what does that actually mean? Well, let's just jump down to verse 16, who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him.
But we have the mind of Christ. We have the mind of Christ. The Holy Spirit has given so that you not only could understand the heartbeat of God, but now you've been granted the mind of Christ, the mind of Christ to begin to graciously give us that wisdom, that discernment, that knowledge so that we might be vessels in his hand, to be used for his glory as we continue to move ahead in life. Once again, the mind is sometimes not held up so high.
We say, you know, that's what a person thinks. I trust that we are in a relationship with Christ that we understand that God uses our minds. He works in our minds in so many different ways, and it's interesting as we journey through life and we continue to move along in those areas of maturity that we often find people struggling with their thoughts. We also find so many people struggling with their ideas and their head.
They're not sure how to discern the way whether or not God is truly leading them or they're simply just wrestling with the mind that is out of control. It doesn't seem to have any boundaries. It doesn't have any ability to refocus. Let's turn to Romans 8.
Once again, my intent is that you and I understand the spiritual life is one in which God works in your minds. He not only transforms the heart, but it's your mind that truly is the weight or the evidence of God's spiritual work in your life. Romans 8, we want to begin by looking at verse 5 and we'll go down through verse 9. Those who live according to the sinful nature, they have their minds set on what that nature desires.
But those who live in accordance with the Spirit, they have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. I trust we come somewhat to a beginning place in our lives where we have offered our head, our minds, to God. We may have come to a place where our desire is that God would fill our hearts with His love as grace, His mercy, His blessing, but our minds, important. They're connected with the spiritual makeup of what allows us to be shaped and transformed is the mind.
The mind is where God truly does some of His greatest work. In verse 6, the mind of simple man is dead, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It doesn't have to submit to God's law nor can it do so.
Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. Verse 9, you however are controlled, not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. It's the mind that is renewed to the Holy Spirit that has not only clarity and wisdom and application of life, but is the mind that is controlled by the Spirit. That is the spiritual man.
That is the individual who has come to a place where the heart has been moved, but the head has been retuned and focused. Turn with me to Romans 12 and we look at verse 2 as well. It's important to understand the beauty of how God shapes and transforms our thought life because that indeed is what gives us the spiritual capacity to not only live a clean life, but it also gives you the resources to live a life of ministry that can go and reach and connect to the world around us. We want the mind of Christ to be at work in us on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday Saturday, and we trust that we rejoice in the mind of Christ on Sunday.
Romans 12, verse 2, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing, help me out, of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good, His pleasing, His perfect will. It's difficult to understand the will of God without a renewed mind.
And that's the emphasis that we want to look at this. But as we try to tie together some of these concepts, our real desire is, well, how do you begin to move in that direction? Well, for the sake of time, I've got to give a real condensed version. And I simply just mentioned it's very important to understand that the mind of God has been revealed to us, according to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, and it's clear in the Scriptures that the way the mind is renewed is through the written word of God.
We understand the thoughts of God because He told them to us. He has laid them down through His truths. And why that is so powerful and important is because the Bible clearly says that all Scripture is God-breathed. You remember when Jesus spoke to His disciples, He breathed on them, and He said, what?
Receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, when He is breathed upon us, it's the same as the Word of God breathes upon us. What you and I must humbly acknowledge is that this truly is the breath of God. And shall I let the Word of God become truly God-breathed once again in my life?
If I resist the idea that the Bible is God's Word, if I set it aside as secondary, if I put it aside as supplementary, if there's anything other than it becomes the true breath of God, guess what? It doesn't work. So it's important to understand the breathing of the Word is what the mind is renewed by, and it is indeed cleansed by the presence of God. The second thing that's so important is to understand the importance of prayer.
You'll find quite often the recorded prayers, if possible, it talks about, is to be enlightened in our hearts and in our minds. The beauty of that is not only that you and I pray that God would graciously give me that wisdom and do that work in my mind. It'd give me the enlightenment and the application to life, but that you and I understand the beauty of being together with others who are praying for our minds to be illuminated with the truth of God's Word. And in that aspect of prayer, as we understand that God entrusts us with His thoughts and He transforms our heart.
A third thing that's extremely important is there's a lot of things that you and I are limited in learning by simply having doctrinal teachings such as systematic study of the scriptures. We need examples in life, we need illustrations in life. We need visual images of life because that's just as important, and so God through His Holy Spirit has preserved stories in the Bible. His intent was never to simply write a storybook.
His intent was that this is the pattern. These are the examples, and these are ways to follow. I remember as a young Christian trying to learn to be sensitive to what God is saying to me and how God wants to use me. I had a pastor say, I want you to understand, as you look through the scriptures and you see stories upon stories upon stories.
Ask yourself one thing, ask yourself what pattern, for example, can I see in that story? Because the way you can verify and validate the leading direction of God is because God has established patterns in scriptures given as principles. He said, these are the ones that I'm going to highlight for eternity. These are the stories that will set the tone.
And as following that, most of us are well aware, we've been imitators since the day we came out of the chicken egg. We watch our parents, we watch our friends, we watch everybody else, imitation, imitation, imitation. We need to learn the imitation of what God truly is attempting to do. And the scriptures give credibility to that.
So we're looking for the pattern, we're looking for that direction that we can trust in. This is the way God communicates, and this is the way He can communicate into my life. One last thing is accountability. If there's anything that keeps me settled down, it's Jerry on Saturday morning.
Regardless of my ideas and my thoughts, Jerry says, well, let's think about that one. And you meet together with other men. Together, we begin to come to an agreement. There's one thing that stands out all through the New Testament, is agreement, agreement, agreement.
And that comes with, you have four friends or whatever, you have together that are agreeing. That what's in your mind is indeed coming from the mind of Jesus Christ. We must rest in the beauty of how God speaks, and He affirms and confirms those things in our lives. I trust that as we prepare ourselves to be ministry minded, to be in a people who not only recognize the beauty of a faith that assures us that we will go to Heaven someday, there's also the beauty of the journey between now and then.
And what communion is about, the Holy Sacrament is about, is in the journey. All we can offer is Jesus. And in the journey, we can only offer as much as Jesus truly has us. The real and I really don't have resources in and of ourselves.
We can tell our story. We can try to create passion. We can try to do whatever we try to do. But it's really only Jesus that we have to offer.
Communions and opportunities to bring ourselves back to remember one thing. The only thing that matters is Jesus inside here. I'd like to invite Yushas to come forward at this time. As we think in terms of yielding our lives to Christ, and we think about yielding our devotion to what God has done in our life and wants to do in our life, we're reminded that communion is primarily the involvement of two very meaningful symbols.
And the first of these symbols is the bread. On Jesus, on the night before He was betrayed, He didn't take a little cracker, but He took a loaf of bread. But trust me, as you think in terms of the concept of bread, it's interesting. The bread, in the Old Testament, is equivalent to the Word of God.
But He took the bread, and He took the Word of God, and He crushed it. He allowed His body to be torn, so that He Himself could become the light giving bread for the Word of God. He took the Old Testament law, and He set it aside, so the New Covenant could be established. He took the idea that you earn your way in essence to do what's right and pleasing, and you'll get a great reward.
And in the New Covenant, Jesus says, I paid the price, I paid it to the full. I died on the cross, so you could be forgiven your sins. And I guaranteed your place in heaven. He took it, and he crushed it.
In essence, He was visually communicating to all of His followers and all those around, that it's all about Jesus Christ, broken for you and for me. That's the significance of the bread. Being torn in half, the cracker being crushed, that you and I take His brokenness and realize that's the beauty of wholeness is what He did. We are to remember that.
It's His brokenness. The other symbol is the juice, or the fruit of the vine. He took a cup, and the cup represents victory. It reminds of a toast, such as a wedding.
The cup is upheld, the toast is made, and the blessing is pronounced. Jesus took the cup representing not only that He has proclaimed His own victory in advance, but He recognizes the cup. He said is His blood, and so the victory in which He promised is in His own defeat. He would die on the cross, and His blood would cleanse us of all our sin.
Yet His victory was His confidence that He will rise again, and He will provide salvation eternally for all humanity. He wants us to remember. There's a broken body, and there's a blood sacrifice that has removed all sin. I encourage everyone to hold the bread and the juice to were served.
I've asked the worship team as they're prepared to lead us in the worship that we would allow our minds and hearts to be focused on what Jesus Christ has.