A House or a Home?

Have any of you ever watched the TV show that comes on HGTV, called “House Hunters”?

The basic premise of the show is that a person, or a couple, or a family, are looking for a house to live in and they go through a real-estate agent to do so.

The real-estate agent presents the people with 3 possible houses that meet the criteria for a house, that they have made clear to the agent, at the onset of the show.

Then, by the end of the show, they have to decide upon which of the three houses they would be most happy with and what compromises they are willing to make and yet still get the most bang for the buck, and ultimately ensure that their choice is the right one.

Then, at the end of most of the episodes and within a short time period of around, like 2 months, the show comes back in and re-visits the couple and their house, after they have moved into it and made changes to it, thus making it their own.

My wife and I have watched numerous episodes of this show, especially the ones where you see the couples who happen to have a few extra million dollars lying around and want a vacation house on some remote, tropical island!

Let me just tell you right now, if I told my wife tomorrow that I had just secured a house on some tropical beach location, none of you would ever see us again!

She would have packed up and on a plane within 3 hours, tops!

That’s how much she loves the beach!

But back to the “House Hunters” show. The basic thing that I wanted to make mention of is of how people go to great lengths to find and secure a house for themselves.

And the real emphasis for today, is not just that they find a house, but even more so, that they convert that HOUSE into a HOME!

Does everyone understand that you can have a house, and it not be a home?

A house is a literal, structural building, that usually has the intended purpose of being the living place for a family, or families.

A house can be full of furniture and people and items, and still not be a home!

The house becomes the home, when it becomes an extension of the family unit.

That is, when it just feels comfortable and right, when you are in it, it is like it was made just for you.

When it develops the character and the very essence of the family that lives in it.

When you find little dings and marks on the walls and in the furniture from the years of raising the your children or grand children, or even your pets, these marks and blemishes are the character traits that are essential in transforming your house into your home!

A house is a structure made of wood and brick and other materials which is held together by nails and screws and for the common purpose of providing shelter for a family, or people in general.

A home is a structure that is made up of the family and the people within it and one that is held together with love and memories and for the common purpose of communion and fellowship!

A house has rooms, but a home has comfy nooks and comfy corners.

A house has furniture, but a home has heirlooms.

A house smells of wood and paint, but a home smells of cookies and fireplaces.

A house has the sounds of creaks and pops and doors opening and closing, but a home has the precious sound of little feet running through it and of laughter and passionate conversations between family and friends!

So, just because you have a house, does not mean that you have made it a home!

This morning, I want to talk about the subject of our “houses” and our “homes”. Both in the physical sense, but even more importantly, from the spiritual sense.

And to start off with, I would like to turn our attention to the Old Testament book of Ezra and give you a brief explanation of what is taking place within this book and within this timeline of the Bible.

The books in the Bible of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, are all centered around the same time period in the history of Israel, which is the time period coming at the end of the Babylonian captivity of the nation of Israel and the years that God had them placed there for their disobedience and rebellion. These books deal with the time period of when the people of Israel are starting to journey back to Jerusalem, as well as what was taking place with those who were still under the rule of the pagan leaders.

And for this morning’s message, we will be focusing specifically on the account that is recorded by the person who was a scribe, a priest and a leader, the man we know as Ezra.

There were three different groups who we read about within the books I just listed, that were making the journey from Babylon, back to Jerusalem. The first group, was led by the leader Zerubbabel, the second group was led by Ezra and the third group was under the leadership of Nehemiah.

The first group which returned with Zerubbabel, undertook the task of rebuilding the temple.

They were going to erect the temple, even before they started work on the walls of the city for protection!

And please note here: before they ever started work on the temple, they built the altar of the temple first.

And note here: before they ever started work on the temple, they built the altar of the temple first.

You see, although the people of Israel feared the surrounding inhabitants of the land, as Ezra recorded in chapter 3:3, they understood that the worshipping of God and making offerings to Him, in honor of Him, was crucial and preeminent in all ways and that in doing so, He would protect them; way more than any mere walls of the city could ever do!

So, the people return from exile and build the altar of the temple and begin making sacrifices before God and then they start laying the foundation for the temple!

And the building of the temple was the very reason that they were coming back to Jerusalem out of exile to do, as king Cyrus of Persia had stated in writing, to all of the Jewish exiles, where he said, “The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build him a Temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.”

And I want to point out what we find in , about the children of Israel returning to Jerusalem, as it says, “In early autumn, when the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people assembled in Jerusalem with a unified purpose.”

“ALL of the PEOPLE with a UNIFIED purpose”! Does this ring a bell with you at all?

The people come together for the building of God’s house, unified, in like mind and God blessed their efforts!

The same thing is seen in another part of the Bible, where it says that the people came together in one accord, like minded and unified for the will of God and God blessed their union with the building of His eternal house, which was the birth of the church on the Day of Pentecost!

Unity is quintessential for the success of the house of God!

If this were not the case, then why did Jesus ask His Father to bless us with unity, before He went to the cross?

If we will not unify (and please note that I didn’t say, “If we CANNOT unify”, because Holy Spirit does that very thing within the body of Christ! He unifies and draws us together, if we allow Him to do so, just as Paul mentions in , where he tells us to “be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”); so if we will NOT unify, then we are wasting our time and we need to go back to whatever it was that we were doing before Jesus changed our lives!

Of course, if you have truly been changed and set free by Christ, would you ever want to go back to what you knew before hand?!

So, the priests and Levites and the workers, unified, as one, laid the foundation for the temple and upon completing the foundation, the priests put on their robes and began to blow their trumpets and the Levites clashed their cymbals, to praise the Lord and shout praises to Him and sing praises to Him, by saying, “He is so good, His faithful love for Israel endures forever!”

The Bible records, “Then all the people gave a great shout, praising the LORD because the foundation of the LORD’s Temple had been laid.”

And in the very next verse, the Bible records this, “But many of the older priests, Levites, and other leaders who had seen the first Temple wept aloud when they saw the new Temple’s foundation. The others, however, were shouting for joy. The joyful shouting and weeping mingled together in a loud noise that could be heard far into the distance.”

So, what you have here is a clashing with the old and the new. Those who mourned the loss of the old and wanted to revisit the glory of the good old days and the things of the past, as opposed to those who were praising God and excited about the new house and reinstating the presence of God within Jerusalem!

There are way too many people who are trying to live in the past glory days of years gone by within the body of Christ!

They are hung up on what God did years ago in older revivals and movements and the way things used to look, even though God has moved on and He is expecting us to look for what He is wanting to do in our lives, here and now, TODAY!

Yes, those movements were great and powerful and important, but our focus is to be on God and His Spirit and to where He is leading us!

The Lord said in ,

The Lord said in ,

Isaiah 43:18–19 ESV

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

We must be like the younger generation in the days of Ezra and praise God for the new foundations that He is building and the new things that He is doing in this new generation, and stop getting hung up on where God was and what God did years and years ago!

And so, upon the people praising God and worshipping Him for the foundation of the new temple being completed along with the wailing of those who were mourning the glory days gone by, all of their noise combined, drew the attention of their enemies towards them!

And when their enemies saw what they were doing and what they had completed and were now celebrating over, they instantly came alongside of the Israelites and said, “Hey, we worship your God as well, so let us help you with your temple!”

You see, the enemy wants to come alongside of you and play the part as an ally and win your trust, so that he can hijack and sabotage your work on building your own house (both your spiritual house within your own body, as well as your own physical house), for the Lord God!

Remember that the devil can appear as an angel of light and his servants can appear as workers of righteousness, according to II Corinthians 11.

So, upon hearing this, the people of Israel saw right through the enemies’ plans and rejected them.

Thus, the enemy then started speaking words of fear and discouragement and doubt to the people of Israel and making them second guess their ability to complete the work of God’s house!

Then, their enemy goes to the king of Persia, King Xerxes, and writes him a letter and asks him to halt the work of these insurrectionists, (which is what they were basically calling the people of Israel), trouble makers!

Xerxes, being a fair weather leader, accommodates the enemy and grants the “cease and desist order” that they were wanting for the people of Israel and thus, upon the getting the order from Xerxes, the people of Israel just a up and stopped what they had been called by God to do!

In other words, they listened to man, instead of listening to God!

And so, for about 16 years, they abandoned what God had called them to do which was building His house, and instead, they turned their hearts to building their own houses and living their own lives.

And the outcome of this, was that they lived without His blessing and without His provisions for their lives.

How many of you know by learning the hard way, that anytime you try to live apart from the will of God for your life, the outcome is never good, or never like it could be?!

So let’s look at what God said to the people in the book of Haggai about His house, which is basically all that the massive book of Haggai and its two chapters is about; the rebuilding of God’s house and the promised blessings that would come from it!

, “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: The people are saying, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.’ ” Then the Lord sent this message through the prophet Haggai: “Why are you living in luxurious houses while my house lies in ruins? This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Look at what’s happening to you! You have planted much but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied. You drink but are still thirsty. You put on clothes but cannot keep warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes! “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Look at what’s happening to you! Now go up into the hills, bring down timber, and REBUILD MY HOUSE. Then I will take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord. You hoped for rich harvests, but they were poor. And when you brought your harvest home, I blew it away. Why? Because my house lies in ruins, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, while all of you are busy building your own fine houses. It’s because of you that the heavens withhold the dew and the earth produces no crops. I have called for a drought on your fields and hills—a drought to wither the grain and grapes and olive trees and all your other crops, a drought to starve you and your livestock and to ruin everything you have worked so hard to get.”

Haggai 1:2–11 NLT

“This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: The people are saying, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.’ ” Then the Lord sent this message through the prophet Haggai: “Why are you living in luxurious houses while my house lies in ruins? This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Look at what’s happening to you! You have planted much but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied. You drink but are still thirsty. You put on clothes but cannot keep warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes! “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Look at what’s happening to you! Now go up into the hills, bring down timber, and rebuild my house. Then I will take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord. You hoped for rich harvests, but they were poor. And when you brought your harvest home, I blew it away. Why? Because my house lies in ruins, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, while all of you are busy building your own fine houses. It’s because of you that the heavens withhold the dew and the earth produces no crops. I have called for a drought on your fields and hills—a drought to wither the grain and grapes and olive trees and all your other crops, a drought to starve you and your livestock and to ruin everything you have worked so hard to get.”

And now listen to what God said would happen with His new house being built. In the second chapter, Haggai records, “For this is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: In just a little while I will again shake the heavens and the earth, the oceans and the dry land.   I will shake all the nations, and the treasures of all the nations will be brought to this Temple. I will fill this place with glory, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.   The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. The future glory of this Temple will be greater than its past glory, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. And in this place I will bring peace. I, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, have spoken!”

God was speaking in the present tense to the people, but also, He was speaking of a future GLORY that would fill His house and one that remain forever!

It has been always been the will of the God, from the time of creation, until today and all the way into eternity, to dwell with us, and us with Him, in His presence!

And the building of His house, the temple, was just a temporal way of making that happen.

God’s plan was slowly being revealed and the mystery of His will would one day manifest in the appearing of His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!

And upon the completed redemptive work of Jesus and upon the cross, with His shed blood, and His resurrection and finally His ascension back to heaven, God’s will would take place.

And with this, would come the building of the NEW HOUSE for God’s presence to dwell within.................us..........you and me!

We are the living, breathing, temples (houses) of almighty God, into which He places His own Spirit, to dwell with us, until the in which He calls to live with Him for eternity in vessels that are glorified and incorruptible!

And now we get to the main point that I want to make for you guys today, as to the houses we build, (both physically, as well as spiritually!)

God made Himself very clear to the leader of the people, Zerubbabel, during this period of the nation of Israel, where God said to him, through the prophet Zechariah, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”

In other words, it would ultimately be through the grace and the power of the Lord God, that the temple would be built and it would be the Lord Himself, who would fill it with His glory!

And the temple that they had all the way back then in the Bible, was filled with things that were merely “copies” of the things in heaven, where God is seated, as tells us, “They serve in a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven.”

BUT, on the day of Pentecost in , the new temple, the NEW HOUSE, was built and it was filled with the REAL DEAL, God’s own presence, His own Holy Spirit!

And just as God had said that it was not by their own might or power, but by His Spirit, that Zerubbabel and the people of Israel would be able to build a house for God, it is even more true for us today!

The wise Solomon said this, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

You and I cannot, on our own, build a house for the Lord God. We may, by our choice and by our free will, ask for Him to become the Lord of our lives, but make no mistake about it; it is God who makes us into new creatures. It is God who forms us into NEW VESSELS and fills us with His glory.

It is God who builds the house, for His presence to dwell. He is the chief architect, the chief contractor and the chief carpenter, who designs and orchestrates and builds these earthen vessels, into a HOUSE for His presence!

says, “For every house has a builder, but the one who built everything is God.”

We may help lay the foundation by repenting and asking for Jesus to cover us with His atoning blood, but it always God, who truly builds the house, as we allow Him to do so!

Tell of the house back in our subdivision which had the foundation laid and the blocks in place, but then construction stopped and the foundation just sat there, for over a decade! (A firm foundation is necessary for the house to stand, but a foundation that is laid, and then never built upon, is meaningless. Just as when the Israelites laid the foundation for God’s house and then walked away for 16 years, so it for us today. If we lay the foundation, through our repentance and then never truly allow the house to be built upon that foundation, then what good is it?

Who is the builder of your house?

Are you trying to do all of the work? Lay the foundation, erect the walls and the roof and provide protection for what’s inside?

And speaking of “what’s inside”, or more appropriately stated, “WHOSE INSIDE”, makes all the difference as to whether you living in a “house”, or a “home”, as I mentioned at the beginning!

Remember that I mentioned at the beginning, that what goes on within the structure, determines whether you have a “house”, or a “home”.

If your vessel is filled with the things of this world, the cares of this world, the concerns of this world, the desires of this world, A.K.A. the “god of this world”, then you are living in an already condemned “house”.

There exists a large sign out front that reads, “CONDEMNED FOR DESTRUCTION”!

Just as the enemy lied and tried to deceive the children of Israel in the book of Ezra into letting them help build God’s house, so also our enemy tries to lie to you and I and let him “help” build God’s house for us.

The enemy of your soul, uses cheap, corrosive materials in the construction of the house that he builds for you. It looks really impressive on the outside, but on the inside, it filthy and it will NOT stand.

The enemy uses pride and hate as the foundational materials for your house, but the Lord God, uses only LOVE, as the foundational material for the house that He builds for you.

So, as a home inspector, how can you tell who has truly built the structure you are in (the Lord God, or the devil) and how can you tell if your vessel is a really just a “house”, or a “home”?

Simple, look at what is constantly going on within the building. Look at what manifests from within the structure. If it was built by the enemy, then you will see signs of his carpentry. “For such people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”

If any of these attributes are a good description of what is going on inside your building most of time, then your builder is none other than the devil.

If however, the inside of your building and what is continually manifesting from within it, is: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”, then your building was built by God!

As to whether your building is a “house” or a “home”, it really depends upon WHO and WHAT you are allowing to come inside and reside there.

Jesus said in ,

Matthew 12:43–45 NLT

“When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. That will be the experience of this evil generation.”

From the time of the children of Israel building the 2nd temple, as we read about in Ezra, until the time of the Christ walking this earth, Israel had fallen into this very state that Jesus was warning about in the passage of Matthew.

The building (the nation of Israel in this case) was cleaned up and emptied out of their wicked idolatrous ways through the punishment of the Babylonian captivity and kept nice and neat and orderly. BUT it was empty of the presence of God, when the enemy returned to it and so, he filled it with more of his garbage than what was there before!

And so, Jesus was saying that because they had been cleaned up, but did not keep God in their vessel, the enemy made them more corrupt than before and thus they were worse off than before.

The same applies to you and I. The Lord God may have built your building and cleaned out everything, but it is up to you, as to whether you allow Him to reside there, or whether you allow the enemy to come in and take occupancy in your building.

I am not talking being possessed, I am talking about your willing allowance of the occupant who resides inside of your building.

If your building contains the sweet aroma of love and forgiveness and humility and it has the memories of redemption and repentance within it, then your building is a “home” for the Lord.

But, if your building contains anger and bitterness and jealousy and pride and memories of wrong doings and hurts and offenses and shame, then your building is “house” for the devil!

You and I get to decide who resides in the building, but be very careful of who and what you are allowing inside! Allowing the enemy to come in and take up refuge in your life and remain there, according to Jesus, makes your end result worse off than what you were before!

This applies to your physical house as well, and about the nature of what takes place inside of your home!

If your physical house and your family are constantly at war with one another and there are words of hate and anger and rage being shouted out, then the enemy has taken up occupancy in the house somehow and somewhere!

And today, we, just like the nation of Israel some two thousand years ago, don’t need “reformation” (which is not NEW LIFE, but is the self-correcting of some bad issues), rather, we need “regeneration” (being born again, made anew in Christ Jesus!!)

A regenerated structure is torn down to the ground and rebuilt anew and filled with the Spirit of almighty God. Then, we must strive DAILY to seek the Lord God and do His will for our lives, so as to not allow any occupancy of the enemy.

Because, just like the show I mentioned at the beginning of “House Hunters”, there are spirits that are roaming to and fro, looking for clean and tidied house, where they can take up occupancy and make their own!

I close by asking you today, who is the one who has built your building and is your place of residency, a “HOUSE”, or is it a “HOME”?