This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to day five, our last day together of our first
week of a look through the Book of First Kings. And we're looking these last
couple days at chapters five to seven, where we learn how to build for God.
These principles that you see as Solomon builds the temple are principles in my
life, in your life, for how we build whatever God wants us to build.

Yesterday, we talked about building what God wants built and building with the
quality materials and things like building and taking the time to rest. Today,
we're going to look at five additional principles for building what God wants
built. Beginning with the sixth principle, build with the right leaders.

In order to build, you have to have the right leadership. And we already looked
at verse 16 yesterday, but to repeat it, he had, as well as it says, 3,300
foremen who supervised the project and directed the workmen. So Solomon didn't
lead the whole thing himself.

He had 3,300 leaders who were directing this project. In order to do anything
building-wise, you have to have the right leaders in place. And as it grows, you
cannot be the only leader.

You have to have more and more leaders. You have to have effective and
well-informed leaders. No leadership results in frustrated workers because
people don't know what to do.

Too many leaders results in confused workers because too many people are telling
them what to do. You gotta have the right number, the right type of leaders to
result in enjoyable work. So whatever God's building through your life, if it's
a family, it's something very small, then as a mom or a dad, you're the leader.

And how does God want you to use you in spiritual leadership of that family? If
it's something bigger, if it's a building project that you're doing, if it's
building a company or a career that you're doing, how can you begin to partner
with other people who are the right leaders? You have to build with the right
leaders.

That's one of the keys. Principle number seven. And of all these principles, I
think number seven is my favorite.

You build with an attitude of worship. There's this amazing thing that happens
in First Kings chapter six verse seven. Listen to this verse.

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. At the quarry, where they were quarrying the rock, they got
entirely ready, the pieces of rock, to put in for these foundations of the
temple so that when they got to the building site, there could be this attitude
of worship, of quiet there. It was an entirely different feel to a building site
because they were building this temple for God, not a sound in this building
because all the stones were cut at the quarry.

Now, if you've ever done any building, you know the difficulty of that. How many
times in building have you cut something, a piece of lumber to go in somewhere,
and found out, oh, it's an inch too long, gone back and cut it? But they're
cutting these huge stones and they're carrying all the way in.

And if they were a half an inch off, they had to take it all the way back and do
it again. Now, I think because of that, they probably got it right the first
time most of the time. Solomon wanted it quiet at this place because he wanted
the atmosphere to be the atmosphere of God's house and not a construction site.

And as you build in your life, you want the atmosphere of worship to pervade
whatever you're building. You want to recognize God's presence in whatever you
do. Now, that doesn't mean you're a businessman and you're building a business.

That doesn't mean you have to start every meeting with prayer. You may do that,
you may not. That doesn't mean you have to every moment say God's name or
recognize that he is there, but you can recognize it in your heart.

And as you recognize that, it's going to change the atmosphere of your place of
work to a place of worship. You build with an attitude of worship. It's one of
the key components of recognizing God's presence as you build to building God's
kind of way.

Principle number eight is you value what you build. You value. Listen to how
Solomon did that in verses 21 to 22.

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.

Now that sounds costly. He's overlaying everything with gold. It was a
statement, when they did this, it was a statement of how they valued God's
house.

And this statement that Solomon made here, it has a principle behind it. You
value what you build. You value what you build with words of encouragement.

You value what you build with prayers for God's blessings. In many ways, that's
your overlaying what you build with gold, is praying for God's blessings, God's
blessings upon what you're building so that God's name, God's glory could be
shown. The reason they put gold on everything is because they wanted God's glory
to be clear.

And when you say I want God's glory to be clear through what's happening in this
family, what's happening in this company, what's happening in my life, what's
happening even as we build this project, this building, I want somehow God to
shine through this. That's overlaying it with gold. And you do that through
prayer.

You do that through committing it to God. It's one of the principles for
building for God. Anything for God.

Two final principles. The last two principles are you finish what you build and
you furnish what you build. Principle number nine, you finish what you build.

First King 638 says, in the 11th year, in the month of Bul, the eighth month,
the temple was finished in all its details according to its specifications. He
had spent seven years building it. He finished the work that he'd started.

So when you're going to build something for God, you build it six by 38. Now six by
38 has nothing to do with the size of anything. It refers to this verse, chapter
six, verse 38.

He finished what he built. If you start it under God's direction, you do so with
a determination to finish it by God's grace. Now I can't control the future, you
can't control the future.

And some of the projects we start don't get finished. We might go on to heaven
early or something else may happen that prevents it from happening very clearly.
But that's not going to happen because of my heart.

If God says I want it built, I don't start it half-heartedly. I start it with a
full determination to finish it by God's grace. As Jesus said, you count the
cost before you start.

Before you start to build the tower, he said. You make the commitment at the
beginning. And then as you make that commitment, you watch as God finishes the
work through you.

Now finishing does not mean you have to rush. That's the mistake I can make
sometimes and maybe you can make. Notice it took them seven years to finish
this.

So you take the time to build it right. The truth is I can hurry and get it
done, but then I have to live a long time with my mistakes. If I hurry and get a
building done and I move into that building, live in it, I'm going to have to live
a long time with that wall that's not quite square and I'm going to see it again
and again and again.

If I hurry and get a company going and I hire the wrong people or I start with
the wrong values and I try to put them back in place later, I'm going to have to
live with that mistake for a long, long time. Truth is I'm in a hurry. Maybe
you're in a hurry, but God is not because what he is building is greater than
what you can see.

He knows what he's building. So he's not in a hurry. He knows the greatness of
it.

So he's willing to put the right foundations in place and take the time to build
it right. Principle number nine, you finish what you build. And then principle
number 10, you furnish what you build.

When the temple was finished, then it had to be furnished. They had to put in
the altars and the tables and everything that allowed it to be used for the
purpose that it had been built for. So beginning in verse 48 down to verse 51,
listen to what happens.

Solomon also made all the furnishings that were in the Lord's temple. The golden
altar, the golden table on which was the bread of the presence, the lampstands
of pure gold, five on the right and five on the left in front of the inner
sanctuary, the gold floral work and lamps and tongs, the pure gold basins, the
wick trimmers, the sprinkling bowls, dishes and censures, and the gold sockets
for the doors of the innermost room, the most holy place, and also for the doors
of the main hall of the temple. When all the work of King Solomon had done for
the temple was finished, he brought in the things his father David had
dedicated, the silver and gold and the furnishings, and he placed them in the
treasuries of the Lord's temple.

Solomon fully furnished this house, from altar to golden cable to spoons and
even hinges, we read about it here. That furnishing was done so that that
building could be used for God's purposes. The importance of furnishings is that
they make the building useful for the purpose for which it's intended.

The furnishing, therefore, is just as important, maybe more important in some
ways, than the building itself. But many times, we build something or start to
build something, we get the foundation, we get the framework, but we don't take
the time to furnish it. We don't take the time to put into place the purposes.

We get tired, maybe because we tried to do it all ourselves. Or many other
times, we build something, we actually put the right purpose into place, but
then that purpose starts to drift. Other people bring in their furnishings,
other people bring in their ideas, and we don't clear them out, and it starts to
drift.

I cannot tell you how many times I've seen somebody build a wonderful family or
a great ministry or an important company, and then seen it lose the purpose that
it was built for. Why did you have those kids? Because you wanted to bring them
up to know the Lord.

But now you're all caught up in your work. You're not spending any time in
bringing them up to know the Lord. You've lost the purpose.

Why did you start that company? Because you wanted it to glorify God. But now
you're so caught up in the legal issues and these issues that you're just trying
to survive rather than glorify God in it.

Why did you start that ministry? So that the world could be changed. But somehow
it's become about you and what people think of you.

It's the easiest thing in the world to let the furnishings of the building get
pushed to the side or other furnishings brought in. But it's also a wonderful
thing to refurnish that house, to get the original furnishings back in place, to
get that other junk out of the way, and to see God's purpose begin to shine
again. It can happen in that life, in that ministry that you have.

Well, we've gone through them the last couple days, these 10 principles from
Solomon about how to build a life, a ministry, a company, a building, a family,
whatever God is asking you to build. My commitment, your commitment now is, are
we going to build according to God's principles or our principles? Let's refresh
our commitment to him just by saying, Jesus, we want to build according to your
principles.

We want to build in ways that honor you and glorify you. We want to build things
that will last because of what you want built. And we want to build in a way that
your purpose continues to be fulfilled.

And so we come to you and we bring whatever we're building to you. And we pray
for the wisdom to build according to your purposes, your principles. And where
we've slid from that, where we've wandered from that, God, we recommit to
building according to your principles.

We do this in Jesus' name, amen. Make sure to join us back next week. We're
going to continue looking through First Kings.

In the next section of First Kings, we're going to learn some lessons, some easy
lessons for life and some hard lessons for life, all from the life of Solomon.
We'll see you this next week.