Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Afraid? Lacking confidence in your abilities? Even Solomon needed encouragement in these areas. Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: Don't be afraid that you're going to get attacked by the enemy because God's given you peace on all the sides. Don't be afraid that you're not going to be able to finish the job because God is going to empower you to do that.

It's like David is saying God's hand was upon me to give me the plans, and God's hand is going to be upon you to build the building. Don't be afraid of that. He could be afraid that this project is too big. "I'm a young guy. I never did anything like that before." Sometimes young people don't have very much faith in themselves or they're not really sure they can pull something off. Well, you don't want to have faith in yourself; you want to have faith in God.

Guest (Female): Give me one pure and holy passion. Give me one magnificent obsession. Give me one glorious ambition for my life to know and follow hard after you. To know and follow hard after you. To grow as your disciple in your truth. This world is empty, pale, and poor compared to knowing you, my Lord. Lead me on, and I will run after you. Lead me on, and I will run after you.

Guest (Male): Faith in God is well-placed, and that's what David encourages his son Solomon to have. That's good encouragement for us today. Hello, and welcome to Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. This is a ministry of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.

In 1 Chronicles chapter 28, we'll be reminded that the Lord gives you all you need to fulfill your calling. David gave Solomon all he needed to fulfill his calling of building the temple. So too will the Lord provide for you. Everything is thought of and will be provided for. That should give you great comfort. We'll be picking things up in verse nine of 1 Chronicles chapter 28. Here's Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: The God of the universe has allowed me to participate with Him by doing thus and such, whatever it is that day that you're doing. And do it wholeheartedly. Get into it. Serve Him all the way. I think that's what David is saying to Solomon here.

Serve Him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind. You know, devotion speaks to the heart and a willing mind—well, that speaks to the mind. So, the heart and the mind kind of go together. You need to have them both: the devotion of the heart and the willingness and understanding of the mind.

Why? For the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. So He knows if you're doing it grumpily or if you're doing it wholeheartedly. He knows what kind of relationship you have with Him. You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool God ever, any of the time.

He knows every heart. The Lord searches every heart. He knows what's in there. No secrets. "Well, I'm doing this because God maybe, but I'm not going to tell Him that. I'll let Him think I'm just happily doing it." Just give up on that. You can't pretend with God. You can fool other people, but you cannot fool Him.

He searches every heart, and He understands every motive behind the thoughts. He knows all those things. The things that you don't tell anybody, the things that you'd rather not anybody else know, He knows everything. So you have sin in your life, you can't keep it from Him, so you can repent of it. He knows about it anyway.

You're going to serve Him; you're going to want to do it wholeheartedly and with devotion. If you seek Him, He will be found by you. But if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever. Look, and that speaks to a forsaking of Him for all of your life. That doesn't mean if you forsake Him for a year or two and then get saved that He's still going to reject you. It means if you die forsaking Him, then you're going to be rejected forever.

But if you seek Him, He will be found by you. Some people say, "Seek the Lord," and some other people say, "Oh, is He lost?" And there's a billboard, or there was on the PA Turnpike years ago. I don't know if it's still there, out in Dutch country, Pennsylvania. Dutch country, there's a lot of Christian stuff you see as you drive the turnpike. "Seek the Lord while He may be found" and stuff like that.

If you seek Him, He will be found by you, and that's true today also. Somebody says, "Well, I tried to have a relationship with God, but it just didn't work for me." Well, they weren't trying very hard, or they weren't trying sincerely. They weren't really into it. You have to really be into it. You have to really seek Him sincerely.

Look, He knows the motive. You can go to college and study a subject you hate and if you study it and get good grades, you can still get that piece of paper with your name on it and a degree. But if you hate walking with the Lord, if you hate knowing Him, if you hate studying His Word, then it's better not even to try or to be bothered.

He wants us to have a willing mind and wholehearted devotion to Him. And those that seek Him will find Him, but those that forsake Him will be rejected. Consider now, verse 10: "For the Lord has chosen you to build a temple as a sanctuary." Consider this. Think about this. Hello? Are you listening, Solomon?

Think about this honor that you've been given here. Consider this. The Lord has chosen you to build the sanctuary. You. Be strong and do the work. Look, nobody ever said walking with the Lord was easy. It's like the guy that said, "Well, I'm praying for a job." Well, how many resumes did you send out? "Oh, I didn't send any resumes out. I'm praying for God to give me the job."

Well, you're going to be waiting a long time, buddy. Nehemiah, they sought God, and they posted a guard. And if you need a job, seek God and send out the resumes. You have to do the work. God put Adam and Eve in the garden to tend the garden, and ever since they lost out on the Garden of Eden, the work got worse. It's harder to get the work done.

Building this temple was not an easy task. We're talking about coordinating tens of thousands of workers for many, many years to build this giant project. David tells Solomon, "Be strong and do the work. Do it." You have to do it. You have to get up every day, and you have to do it. You're not going to sit around saying, "Oh, someday we're going to have a great temple. It's going to be great."

You can talk about it all you want, but if you don't do the work, you're never going to have it. You can pontificate about it, tell everybody what you're going to do. "Let me show you my blueprints here. We're going to have a great temple." But when are you going to get started building it? "Well, maybe next year." No delay is what David is saying to Solomon here. Be strong, get to the job, do the work. This is important.

Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, its storehouses, its upper parts, its inner rooms, and the place of atonement. He gave him the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind for the courts of the temple of the Lord and all the surrounding rooms, and for the treasuries of the temple of God and for the treasuries for the dedicated things.

David gave Solomon all the blueprints for everything: the building, storerooms, upper parts, inner rooms. And notice here in verse 12, he gave him the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind. Look, who are we to know, who is a man to know what God needs in His house?

When you have a house built, say you hire an architect to build the house, you're a human, and the architect's a human, and he knows you need a bathroom, preferably two and a half bathrooms. And he knows you need a garage to park your car. And everybody needs a living room with at least one big wall to hang their flat-plasma screen on and a certain number of bedrooms. And it's nice to have a yard for the kids. So someone can help you design a house because they know what the needs of people are.

Well, what are the needs of God? What does He need in His house? Does He need a bathroom? I don't think so. They don't even have bathrooms on the USS Enterprise. I mean, have you ever seen anybody on Star Trek go to the bathroom? God doesn't need that. What does He need?

He needs storerooms for the offerings, and He needs a place of atonement. The whole thing was set up based on the plan that God gave by the Holy Spirit to David. He gave him the plans of all the Spirit had put in his mind. The Holy Spirit gave him these things, and he wrote them down. This is what it's going to look like, the house of God.

And this is going to be the part where God resides; you can't go in there. And this is going to be the part where people are. And this is going to be where we make the offerings. And this is going to be where we keep the offerings before we make them. And this is going to be where we count the money from the offerings of money so that we can fix the place up. God put the plans in his mind, and David wrote them all out somehow so that he could communicate that to Solomon.

He gave him instructions for the divisions of the priests and Levites and for all the work of serving in the temple of the Lord, as well as for all the articles to be used in its service. So he not only gave David the blueprints and the layout, but he told him who's going to work in there and how they're going to have all that laid out. And then he told him all the different articles that were going to be used in the service of the temple, all the different things that were needed to carry on their duties each day.

He designated the weight of gold for all the gold articles to be used in the various kinds of service and the weight of silver for all the silver articles to be used in various kinds of service: the weight of gold for the gold lampstands and their lamps, with the weight of each lampstand and its lamps, and the weight of silver for each silver lampstand and its lamps, according to the use of each lampstand.

David told him, "This is how much ounces of gold you're going to use to build each of these things. This is how many ounces of silver you're going to use over here." The weight of gold for each table for consecrated bread, the weight of silver for the silver tables, the weight of pure gold for the forks, sprinkling bowls, and pitchers, the weight of gold for each gold dish, the weight of silver for each silver dish, and the weight of the refined gold for the altar of incense.

He also gave him the plan for the chariot, that is, the cherubim of gold that spread their wings and sheltered the ark of the covenant of the Lord. The weight of everything. And those angels up there on top of the ark, that was where God was. It was like His chariot. And those cherubim up there referred to by the word chariot here, how big they were and how big their wingspan was going to be and how much gold you were going to need to make all that.

"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." Look, verse 19 here very clearly spells it out. David says, "I have this in writing from the hand of the Lord upon me." The Lord's hand was upon David. David wrote this out. These blueprints, this was going to be built exactly the way God wanted it because it was in writing from the hand of God, and David got understanding in all the details of this plan. He understood what it was all about.

David also said to Solomon his son, "Be strong and courageous and do the work." Isn't that kind of like a repeat of verse 10? Be strong and do the work. And you know, there's a shadow here of Moses turning over Israel to Joshua. Moses, as you know, wasn't able to go into the Promised Land, and Joshua took over. And if you look back at the beginning of the book of Joshua, there's some real parallels to these verses that we're reading here.

Joshua 1, verse 6: "Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left that you may be successful wherever you go."

So you see, Moses turning over the leadership to Joshua, you see a lot of parallels with David now turning it over to Solomon. Two guys that had been very successful at serving the Lord, turning it over and telling those that took over after them, "Be strong and courageous."

David also said to Solomon his son, "Be strong and courageous and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished."

The divisions of the priests and Levites are ready for all the work on the temple of God, and every willing man skilled in any craft will help you in all the work. The officials and all the people will obey your every command. David just reminding Solomon, "Be strong and courageous, do the work." And that's the opposite of being afraid and discouraged, and that's what he doesn't want him to be. Do not be afraid or discouraged.

Why would he be afraid? Don't be afraid that you're going to get attacked by the enemy because God's given you peace on all the sides. Don't be afraid that you're not going to be able to finish the job because God is going to empower you to do that. He gave David—it's like David is saying God's hand was upon me to give me the plans and God's hand is going to be upon you to build the building. Don't be afraid of that.

He could be afraid that this project is too big. "I'm a young guy. I never did anything like that before." Sometimes young people don't have very much faith in themselves or they're not really sure they can pull something off. Well, you don't want to have faith in yourself; you want to have faith in God.

And why would he be discouraged? Well, hello, this is going to take years. It would be easy to work your tail off for a couple of years and look at what you've done and say, "Wow, all we got now is a big hole in the ground." I remember watching them build a new building out at Willow Valley, one of our nicer, more favorite vacation spots. And when they built that new building, I remember this big giant pit, and we were peering through the fence looking at this pit.

And nowadays with modern machines, to build a big building like that, it can be done in a year or two. But back in these days, how they did this, man, it's hard to imagine. But it would be easy to be discouraged. It's easy to be discouraged with radio stations when equipment breaks and you have to drive 309 miles round trip just to press a few buttons and move some things around. It's easy to be discouraged.

But he's saying, "Don't be that. Don't be afraid and don't be discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you." So you don't have to worry about no one's going to be able to do anything to you, hurt you, stop you, prevent you from doing this. You don't have to be afraid because the Lord God, my God, is with you. And I like the way David says "my God."

He's not just a God, some God, the God; He's my God, David says. And we should be able to make that statement ourselves. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. Feeling down, you feel like you're not getting a whole lot accomplished? You feel like there's more to do and you just can't get to it?

And David says, "My God is with you." And He wants to be your God also, and He'll see you through whatever it is. Don't be afraid. Don't be discouraged. God is going to see you through somehow. How does He do that? Well, if we knew that, we'd be God, and we're not God, so we don't know that. We just know that He does it.

Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished. Then He'll fail you and forsake you? No, that's not what that means either.

He will not fail you. I think of that scripture: "no weapon formed against you will stand." He's not going to fail you. He's always going to be there for you. You know, you're not going to do all this and find out it was all done in vain. And He's not going to forsake you. He's not going to say, "I don't know you anymore. I'm tired of you." Your friends on Earth might do that. Happens all the time to people.

Your best friend can disown you, look the other way, want to have nothing more to do with you because you wore the wrong color shirt someday. Petty, petty little things that people divide over. How petty are they? Well, Jesus Christ died for us so that He could redeem us from our sins. And there's nothing that should separate one believer from another believer, and there's nothing that'll separate us from the love of God. Impossible.

It cannot be done. The most powerful rocket ship could not separate you from the love of God. You could go to the other side of the galaxy, the other side of the universe, to some dimension that we don't even understand. And on Star Trek, when they have all the different Enterprises from all the different universes there, you could go in any one of them universes if they exist, and God would be there. There's no place you could be without Him.

He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished. He won't fail any of us here in this room either until all the work in our life is finished and we see Him face to face and we'll be like Him when we see Him there, when we're with Him on that day.

He will not fail any of us. He will not forsake any of us. But we need to be strong and courageous, not be afraid and discouraged, and we need to follow after Him. The divisions of the priests and Levites are ready for all the work on the temple of God, and every willing man skilled in any craft will help you in all the work.

This is a big job for a young man who's inexperienced. It would be easy for Solomon, his head to be spinning. "Oh my gosh, what have I got myself into here? How did this ever happen? Maybe I should have let Adonijah do it himself." But David's telling him, "Look, you have helpers. I provided all this material for you. I provided all these helpers for you. You have everything you need."

The priests, the Levites, they're ready for all the work on the temple of God. They're ready. Just have to tell them what to do. And every willing man skilled in any craft will help you. Whatever you need. You need somebody that can deal with masonry? You got masons. People that can deal with fabric? They had those.

People that could build buildings? No problem. They knew how to do that. They had the people to do that. People that could work with dyes and colors and, you know, ink or what have you, paint—painting things different colors, however they did it. It wasn't probably called paint. But whatever there was, there was somebody that knew how to do that. Work with precious stones, jewels, gems; melt down gold, make it into different things; work with silver, brass, bronze, iron, whatever. They knew how to do all this stuff. And every willing man skilled in any craft will help you in all the work. You'll have plenty of help. Just be courageous and do it.

Furthermore, he says, "The officials and all the people will obey your every command." In other words, David says, "I'm giving you all the materials, all the supplies, and all the people. Just tell them what to do, and here's the blueprints. Okay, you do this, you do that, you do the other thing." They're all going to get to work, and God's going to see it through.

You don't have to worry about anything. You don't have to think, "This is above me, beyond me. There's no way I could ever do this." Just start walking it out. Just start doing what God has called you to do. Just start putting one foot in front of the other, worrying about one thing at a time, every day having enough trouble for itself.

Don't worry about next year, next month, three years from now. This was a multi-year project. But let's just worry about one day. Get the blueprints out, put the people to work, tell them to do these things, and they'll do it.

And you know, when we walk with the Lord today, we should be walking with Him worrying about today. We shouldn't be worrying about it either, but we should be thinking about today, concentrating on today, maybe thinking about tomorrow also, but we needn't worry about next month or next year or the year after that or ten years from now. That's God's problem.

Henry Blackaby said he didn't believe in making a one-year, five-year, and ten-year plan because he was afraid if he had a plan, he might achieve his goal and he might never know what God really wanted to accomplish. What God wanted to accomplish might have been so much more than his plan.

And I think David here is telling Solomon just get started, just start working on it. And we can take that to heart ourselves in how we walk with the Lord in our relationship with Him. Just walk with God. Let's pray every day. Don't worry about what you're going to pray about tomorrow; just pray today. Study the Bible every day. Read God's Word. Ask Him to speak it to our hearts when we read it. Ask Him to plant it inside of us. It's alive.

It changes lives. It always accomplishes the purpose that it's set out to do. And if we can learn anything from this chapter, it would be to walk with God, to have a relationship with Him, to know the God of our fathers, to serve Him with all of our heart, to be strong and do the work, and walk out whatever He has for us. Maybe we don't know what He has coming next week or next month or next year, but that's okay. We just have to get up tomorrow and go through whatever God has put in our steps today.

And I can tell you on Sunday night I was working with Mike, looking at all these radio station stuff, and it was one problem after another. How are we going to fix this? How are we going to fix that? This isn't shaping up. That isn't shaping up. This whole thing, I'm sorry we ever started this project. And our heads were spinning.

But when I got back yesterday after driving all over creation—some nice scenery out there, too—all of a sudden just things had fallen into place. One problem was solved, another problem was solved. Just seemed like, "Wow, we made some progress here." Just worrying about—there's still a lot of other things on the list, too many to think of. I don't even have a list of everything that needs to be done.

But I'm always grateful at the end of a day if God did something that day, if I could say something was accomplished. The Lord somehow worked today and accomplished something. And I think we can learn that from this here. Be strong and do the work. Walk with the Lord in wholehearted devotion. Follow Him with a willing mind and let Him work in your hearts and in your lives. Don't be afraid of anything, and don't be discouraged because He's with us.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in a study of 1 Chronicles. You can hear this message or more Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. If you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope From the Word wherever you find your podcasts.

We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 AM, and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you take a moment to write Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us.

We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study in 1 Chronicles next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.