Build Me A Sanctuary

Exodus 25:1–9 (NIV)

The Lord said to Moses,

“Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering. You are to receive the offering for me from everyone whose heart prompts them to give.

These are the offerings you are to receive from them: gold, silver and bronze;

blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair;

ram skins dyed red and another type of durable leather; acacia wood;

olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense;

and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece.

“Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.

Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.

Exodus 35:4–5 (NIV)

Moses said to the whole Israelite community, “This is what the Lord has commanded:

From what you have, take an offering for the Lord. Everyone who is willing is to bring to the Lord an offering...

Exodus 35:20–21 NIV

Then the whole Israelite community withdrew from Moses’ presence, and everyone who was willing and whose heart moved them came and brought an offering to the Lord for the work on the tent of meeting, for all its service, and for the sacred garments.

Exodus 35:29 NIV

All the Israelite men and women who were willing brought to the Lord freewill offerings for all the work the Lord through Moses had commanded them to do.

Introduction

Today is going to be a special day for Lighthouse Church, and one that I believe we will carry with us for a really long time. And I love days like today.

Don’t you just love days like these? These are the days that we will look back on and say to ourselves, that was a good day.

I remember one of those days so vividly, and it was when my family took a 2020 road trip. I’ve shared the story with you, but it is worth repeating. It’s also going to be the first time that many of you have heard this story becuase this church just keeps on growing! Come on somebody!

We had another 6 people go through Growth Track last Wednesday. And Lighthouse, when I tell you that we had some AMAZING people go through Growth Track, I mean that we had some AMAZING PEOPLE go through Growth Track.

So let me get to my story… We were on our road trip and we were leaving the Grand Canyon and we were going to make the 90 minute drive through the Indian Reservation and up into Utah so that we could go see Horse Shoe Bend. When we got to the furthest-most east past of the Grand Canyon we learned that the access road had been closed in an effort to stop the spread of COVID in the reservation, so we had to redirect back west, then south then back east and eventually north. In short, this turned our 90 minute ride into a 4.5 hour drive to get to our next destination.

Since we were already in good spirits about the day, and we’re still pretty early on our road trip we decided to make the best of it and continue on our journey.

We knew that the day became special when we finally arrived at Horse Shoe Bend and it was the Golden Hour. It made for the most amazing pictures, we had such a great time out there running around with the weather cooling, and eventually seeing the sun set at Horse Shoe Bend. I remember Joanna and I getting into our car and we knew that this was going to be a day that we always remember.

The Text

There are some things about our experience, and together with this text, and what I am going to share with you today that I think collectively will make for an amazing day. Here in the text, we have two passages that are connected by word and action. The first is God speaking to Moses, and he tells them to tell the Israelites to bring an offering for the construction of the sanctuary, or the tabernacle. In the second passage, which parallels the first, Moses tells the people exactly as the Lord instructed him to do. And then in our later passages, we read that the people brought their offering for the construction of the tabernacle.

So there’s some things that we need to pull on in our text, and here is the first.

It was God who Asked Moses to Ask the People

Let’s rest there and not read right over that.

The Lord, the creator of the heavens and the earth tells Moses that the tabernacle was going to be built on the willing generosity of the people.

The Lord could have spoken a tabernacle into existence, but instead, he tells Moses to ask the people.

And I believe that the reason that he does this is framed up in the language of the ask, I want it to be a “willing offering.”

God involves humanity into the plans of heaven. What he is looking for in response is humanities willingness to participate in the plans of heaven.

One thing that I’ve learned about God is, he will accomplish His will here on earth.

As a matter of fact, many times I read that in the Old Testament, whenever his chosen people were reluctant to participate in His plans, he would raise up someone else to accomplish them.

But that was never his design.

His design is for His people to want to participate in His plans here on earth. Willingly.

So he comes to Moses, and he emphasizes that he wanted people to give with a willing heart. This would be the posture he wanted for his people to have. So that...

So That I May Dwell Among Them

The Lord would dwell among them. Somebody say Dwell.

Once again, there is so much weight to this statement here…

If we go back to the first point, God was speaking to Moses, it actually describes a model of relationship that God wanted out of.

The people were getting very used to Moses going to God for them. They were liking the fact that they had a proxy relationship with God.

And God wanted out of that. That’s why he was giving Moses a new covenant, and a command on how to build the tabernacle, and the Ark of God, which we talked about last week. He didn’t want to just dwell among Moses, but now he wanted to dwell among the people.

So this begs the question… did God need a tabernacle?

No, but I think the people did.

So God, knowing the heart of people, wanted to build a meeting place so that he could meet the people where they are at.

This has always been God’s heart! Even in the Old Testament. He so wanted a relationship with people that he was willing to meet them according to their terms and meet with them in a sacred place; the tabernacle.

So God’s heart has always been to dwell among the people, and the people’s willingness to build the tabernacle would be their response to mutually wanting to meet with God.

So when God says I want to dwell with people he involves us as a measure of our hearts, and our desire to want to be involved with his plans for us.

In Response To...

The more I see God in both the Old and New Testaments, and the more I learn about God in my personal and quiet moments, I discover that he is the one who moves first, and then asks of me, now what will your response be...

For example, he died for my sins on the cross. He already erased the penalty of sin. Now he looks down to see what my response will be.

I could never be good enough to earn salvation. I could never be good enough to earn God’s love. I could never be good enough to deserve God’s grace. So he freely makes it available and just asks, “what’s your response going to be?”

i think about this church, and our story coming here.

[tell the story]

They Left as a Community

So as we go back to our text theres something that I have to point out here in our text. We read that the people willingly and freely gave the offerings that were needed in order to build the tabernacle. It was a supernatural event that the Bible records that they brought so much money and supplies for the build of the tabernacle that Moses had to tell the people, “We’re good! We got enough!”

I love that passage in the Bible.

But this supernatural rallying cry is embedded in this word that we find here in verse 20, “community”.

Exodus 35:20 (NIV)

Then the whole Israelite community withdrew from Moses’ presence,

Let me talk about community.

I let the cat out of the bag last week that I am in the process of writing my first book. I hope to write more than one. Not sure how many, but I’m almost done with my first book. Included in this book is a section about community.

I’m going to read it to you. You’re the very first group to hear an excerpt from my book. You see what happens when you come to the 9:30 AM? You get the fresh stuff. Everything is reheated for the 11 AM. Don’t tell them I said that…

Here we go… I’s an excerpt on what it means to find a faith community.

Have you ever lived in a neighborhood where no one spoke to each other? People went about their days going to work or to school, and there was no real connection with anyone on the block. Now contrast that with the type of neighborhood where the kids played together on the streets and driveways until the street lights came on. Women walk next door to borrow a cup of sugar if they ran out at home. People didn’t just look after their kids, but they looked out for the other kids on the block. This isn’t just a neighborhood, but it’s a community. People who share the same interests and look out for one another. This is what I mean by finding a community.

That’s it. That’s all your getting today.

But did you catch the point of it all? Community is a bond. Community places the whole above the individual. Community is making sure that no one ‘s needs go unmet. And it doesn’t happen because it is regulated from without, but it is a product from the bonds from within.

The bible says that the community withdrew from Moses’ presence.

When Moses put out the command to the individuals, their response was not to leave as individuals, but they left as a community united in the purpose of building a place where God would dwell.

Pastor Phil and I had a front row seat to some of this… we grew up in the same church, and we were the recipients of someone else’s sacrifice. You see, our grandparents and our parents generation built that new church. There was such a sense of pride, ownership and honor that they had towards the church that they built.

In retrospect, here’s what I learned. While they built the building, God built the people.

Let’s Build a Place Together

Lighthouse, today we get to build a place where God will meet with people every single week here in Vista, and we get to do it together in community!

Now, over the last few months, we’ve been taking the designs and turning them into architectural plans. We’ve had to hire engineers to do studies on some of the walls we want to knock down. It’s been a process that’s gone longer than we anticipated, but we’re ready to get going with some of the pre-permitting work in the church, and now, raising the capital that is needed to bring this vision to life.

I want to share with you what it will take to bring this vision to life here at Lighthouse Church.

Show Slides & Read Numbers

Church Upper - $189,400

Church Lower - $164,800

Kids Upper - $171,500

Kids Lower - $114,450

Exterior - $212,000.

Baptism - Let’s use $70K for the baptism for now.

Now I want to be very clear on how we have priced up the work that is to be done.

We’re not only having to work through a backlog that is in large part due to coming out of the pandemic, but we’re also dealing with inflation being at the highest it’s been in 40 years. When Selah and I sat down to talk about how we would price up this effort, we felt it was in our next interest as a church to error on the side of caution, and price this effort out on the high side. We also now that we may open up some walls and encounter some unknowns. Things are going up daily. The challenges in construction are real. So what you see here is on the higher side, and we’re going to work as hard as we can to reduce costs.

But if we get no help from the church in terms of people coming to help us demo, people coming to help us build, or paint, or lay down floors, then this is what it would cost us to completely hire out to job.

But I believe as a community we can do two things:

Together, we’re going to raise all the capital that we are going to need so that we never encounter a stop work due to funding.

We’re going to have work days, and we believe the men and women of our church will respond and we’ll chip away at as much work as we can to alleviate some of these costs.

Let’s Check Our Hearts

Lighthouse, Pastoring through a build out is new territory for me. I’ve been a part of this same process at our South Campus, but truthfully, I was sitting in the second chair. Today, I’m leading the effort and there’s the weight is heavy.

But God began to prepare my heart for this last November, and he did it again this last week.

Last November, as we were beginning our move to North County, we decided to keep our home and rent it out. I prayed to God that if he would send me a family that would love our home, and would be awesome tenants, we would tithe on the income on that property. I would start to treat that as an investment, and I would tithe the “increase”. Now, we received over 40 applications on our home when I listed it. It was kind of suffocating. But there was one application that popped. And it was a family that I knew of. So coincidentally, and I don’t believe in coincidences, the perfect family submits an application and the home checks all their boxes, and they check all of our boxes. Today, not only do we have amazing people and a loving family that is loving on our home, but there is such a peace that we have now.

I believe God did that becuase I committed to bringing a tithe back to the church. This is all on top of the tithe that both my wife and I give through our paychecks and offerings that we regularly give to the church.

Last month, out of no where, a lady who was in my small group calls be up and decides that she wanted to give me a boat. Now, I don’t have need of a boat. I don’t have a vehicle that can tow a boat. There were moments when I pictured me and my family out on the bay watching the fireworks, and I started thinking, “wouldn’t it be amazing if we kept the boat!” But I knew that the boat came my way to sell and give all of the proceeds to the build out of the church. Just last Thursday she signed it over and I am in the process of getting it ready to sell.

Lighthouse, let me tell you something. When you start to tell God, “If you financially bless me, I will build your church” watch what God does in your life.

Last Summer my financial advisor who is a Christian and long time family friend wanted to do a series on principles in the Bible of investing your money. He came and taught a small group of us here, and we were all blown away by what God’s word said so plainly about saving and investing our finances.

But he shared this with our group when it we talked about the upcoming build out. He said that he has been a part of two build outs of churches, and every time, people who were committed to the process of building out God’s church, they started to receive supernatural increase over their homes and families. People started getting settlement money, financial windfalls, inheritances, and more. He told me this, and it stuck with me, “when you decide to build God’s church, he will provide for you in ways you can’t imagine.”

And so Lighthouse, we have an audacious goal of raising $700,000 so that we can complete this build out as quickly, and as complete as we can.

What I mean by complete is if we can’t get the funding we need, we will start to phase the build out.

I am trusting that God will supernaturally provide all that we need, and more.

I want to get to the point here that we have more than enough, and now we can finally start hiring Staff at Lighthouse so that we can serve our city in a higher capacity. How many of you will believe for that together with me?

So I’m closing with this Lighthouse.

If you want to willingly and cheerfully be a part of this, and that’s so important to me Lighthouse. The only way this works, is when we follow the same word God gave to Moses, “follow the prompting of your heart.” At the Holy Spirit’s prompting, I’m going to ask you to commit to one, or more than the following.

Commit to Tithing. We have a lot of people here who do financially support the church, but they are not bringing a tithe to the house. A tithe is 10%. Anything less than that is not biblically a tithe. Why the tithe? Because that’s the principle taught in the scriptures. God does something miraculously with the tithe, and I’ve seen it over and over again.

Bring a Financial Gift. It’s not going to just take a collective increase in our giving to fund the build out, but it is also going to take several large gifts. We’re going to need people who will sacrificially sow $50,000, $25,000, $10,000 or whatever extravagant gift you can bring. There are families here that are in a financial position to do that, and I would ask you to pray about it. Speak to one another as a family. And bring a sacrificial gift to the house. Some of my friends at our South Campus sold extra vehicles they had to bring a gift. They got really creative, and all of that is open and welcome! If you make this a priority you’ll get ideas on how you can make a generous financial gift.

Invite Others Into Our Journey. Lastly, we are going to print this week some marketing materials that outline the projects, the costs and the timeline. I am going to be speaking with Pastor’s and churches in our area, and outside of our area, to make a contribution to our built out. Joanna and I did this all by ourselves when we needed to raise money to launch the church. Now, I’m going to ask some of you to join me. Why? Because this isn’t my church, it’s our church. You may have family, coworkers, employers, investors who are looking to make a donation to a non-profit entity. We are that. And every donation is deductible, but your personal and any contributions made by outside individuals. If you would like to join me and get out into the market place and find people who would give towards this I want God to use you!

So these are the three things we are praying for. Some of you will commit to one of these, some of you will commit to all of these. Whatever God is leading you to do, that’s what I am going to ask you to do.

Lastly, I want to pray over you. If you want to build his church, and if you want to sacrificially be a part of what God is going to begin doing here at Lighthouse, I’m going to invite you to come so that I can pray over you.

Your prayer should be, “God I want to build your church, and I want to financially contribute to this effort. Would you show me what to give, and how to give? I want to bring a gift that makes a difference. I want to do this both willingly and with your prompting. If you will supernaturally send resources to me, I will be faithful to give what you are asking of me to the church. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.”