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[0:00] Well, good morning, friends. Let's turn to Zechariah chapter 6 together. What a wonderful song to prepare us! For hearing God's word, the words of eternal life.

[0:11] We have a God who hasn't remained silent, but he speaks, and he's speaking to us this morning. Even through a humble, shivering, cold little preacher at the front.

[0:26] Let's pray that God would reveal his glory to us through the preaching of his word. Let me pray, and then I'll read Zechariah 6 for us. Loving Father, we are thrilled to hear you speak.

[0:40] We don't take it lightly. It's so precious to us that you have revealed yourself to us, that you want us to know you, and that you know us.

[0:51] We pray for help this morning to listen carefully to your word as we read it in the scriptures, as I try to preach it. We pray, Father, that you would open our eyes to the wonderful truths about the Lord Jesus, who he is, and eternal life in him.

[1:06] We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Zechariah says, And the word of the Lord came to me, take from the exiles, Heldai, Tobijah, and Jediah, who have arrived from Babylon, and go the same day to the house of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah.

[1:27] Take from them silver and gold, and make a crown, and set it on the head of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and say to him, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Behold, the man whose name is the branch, for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord.

[1:48] It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord, and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the council of peace shall be between them both.

[2:01] And the crown shall be in the temple of the Lord, as a reminder to Helem, Tobijah, Jediah, and Hen, the son of Zephaniah. And those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the Lord.

[2:13] And you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. And this shall come to pass if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God. All right, I want to begin with a quote from Peter Jensen's book, The Life of Faith.

[2:32] If you are looking for a great introduction to Christian doctrine, there is no better book than this one. I really highly recommend it. It's wonderful. And this quote is from Peter Jensen's chapter on Jesus' resurrection and exaltation.

[2:47] Okay, he says, Without a doubt, Christian piety, Christian religion, Christian worship, is Trinitarian. We pray to the Father in the name of the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

[3:02] But from another point of view, it is Christ-centered. And the Christ whom we worship is not a figure from the past, but is our contemporary and living Lord who will one day come again.

[3:18] Okay, I just want to start off by thinking a little bit about this point that he's making. So at SLBC, you may have heard, we love Jesus. Right?

[3:28] Do we? Amen! Hallelujah! We love Jesus. In fact, that is what we want everyone to know, isn't it? That Jesus is our precious King, our Savior, our Lord, our friend.

[3:41] He's the Alpha and Omega. He's the Lion and the Lamb. He's the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He's the Good Shepherd, the True Vine, the Great High Priest, the Bread from Heaven, and so on. If we want people to hear anything about us, isn't it that we love Jesus and we want everyone to know him?

[4:00] We want people to meet Jesus. So if you're here this morning, just by the way, and you don't yet know Jesus, please especially hear me loud and clear on this.

[4:10] What I want to say this morning is probably going to be fairly tough, even for people who are very familiar with the Bible. Okay? We've got a bit of a tricky passage to cover. There are some tough and kind of complex verses in it.

[4:24] So if everything else I say this morning doesn't make any sense, just hear this one point. We love Jesus and we want everyone to know him. We want you to know how wonderful Jesus is for yourself.

[4:40] But from time to time, I do get asked, why are we so Jesus-centered? And not say, Father-centered or Spirit-centered or even God-centered.

[4:54] Why meet Jesus, to borrow from our AFES friends, rather than meet God or meet the Spirit? And you know, there are some other organizations like this too, aren't there?

[5:07] The Church Missionary Society. Does anyone remember their slogan? A world that knows Jesus. It's like they're obsessed. But surely, we are, exactly.

[5:21] But surely, God the Father is worthy of our love and adoration. Surely God the Spirit is wonderful and precious to us, isn't he? I hope so.

[5:33] We love God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Holy Trinity are all co-equal in majesty, co-eternal. They are of one essence.

[5:45] They're of equal value. They're of one distinct, they're of one substance. And yet, they are distinct persons that we relate to.

[5:55] So, it's not as if the Holy Spirit, for instance, is just a force or an attribute of the Father like love or peace or something like that. No, he is a person in his own right, if that's the right way to put it.

[6:10] But he's a person and therefore we can have a personal relationship with him. But as Peter says, and again, this is Peter Jensen, not Peter the Apostle, and they are on slightly different levels.

[6:23] But still, as Peter Jensen says, and I think he's right, even though from one angle Christian piety is Trinitarian, from another point of view it is specifically Christ-centered.

[6:35] It is not for nothing that the first century believers in Antioch started getting called Christians. Right? Christians, not Spiritians, not even Godians or the Godians of the galaxy.

[6:48] And that's because, so that was cheap, that was a silly joke, but that's because we relate to the three persons of the Godhead not in a flat way, if I can put it like that.

[7:01] Okay, what I mean is that we don't relate to God like this. I think I've got a diagram. We don't relate to God like this. This is wrong, with a sort of equal, flat, same, same relationship to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[7:16] No, we relate to God more like this, even though all diagrams of the Trinity are outrageously heretical and this one is definitely wrong, but it's sort of getting at something, that the Holy Spirit is within us, right?

[7:29] and the Holy Spirit points us up to God the Son through whom, in turn, we approach God the Father. Which is why you see that like our immediate attention is always going to be on God the Son.

[7:43] That's where it ought to be. The Holy Spirit is working in our hearts, directing our eyes, as it were, in a sense, not to look inside ourselves at Him, but to look up at Christ.

[7:59] And then you see, we don't look directly at God the Father, do we? The invisible God? No, we look to Him through the Son, through His image, through the revelation of Himself.

[8:09] The Son makes Himself known, the Son makes the Father known to us. So, in John chapter 1, verse 18, for instance, John writes, no one has ever seen God, but the only God, that is Jesus, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.

[8:26] Or again, in John chapter 14, Philip said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?

[8:39] Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father. The point is that Jesus is the visible expression of the invisible God. When we talk about seeing God face to face, we always mean we're going to see Him in the face of the Lord Jesus.

[8:53] Jesus is the Word of God, the revelation of God. There is no way of encountering God apart from, through Him. No way of knowing God apart from Him.

[9:06] And that's why I think it's worth knowing, in just a thing about church history, that different movements have often gone astray by shifting their attention away from Jesus to either the Father or the Spirit for different reasons.

[9:21] So our charismatic friends, for instance, would be a classic example of a group that tend to focus on the Holy Spirit. But in fact, by so doing, we need to insist that they are out of step with the Holy Spirit.

[9:37] Precisely because they focus on Him. See, the Spirit does not want us to focus our attention on Him. Truly Spirit-filled churches will focus on Jesus.

[9:49] Jesus. The cross will be our symbol, not the dove. And likewise, what you might call liberal churches have often focused on the Father instead of Christ in an attempt to make Christianity less exclusive and dogmatic.

[10:09] That might sound strange, but basically what they want to say is that, you know, all religions are just different paths up the same mountain to meet the same God or gods or, you know, the big elephant we're all feeling in the sky at the top of the mountain.

[10:24] He lives at the top. And in Christian tradition, we call Him God the Father and we go to Him through Jesus, but we're not claiming to have kind of special, exclusive kind of access to Him.

[10:38] He's really the Father of all people everywhere, so men and women everywhere, of any religion and creed, going up any pathway they like can get to Him. You see the argument?

[10:49] And so they'll talk about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all mankind. But that's not right, is it? What the Bible tells us is that God the Father, the true and living God, does not want to be known and therefore cannot be known apart from His Son.

[11:09] He will not accept people, as it were, using different roads to approach Him. So again, back to John chapter 14. John is like the general who pushes all of these doctrines very clearly.

[11:21] Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Or again, in John chapter 1, Jesus came to His own and His own people did not receive Him, but to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.

[11:39] In other words, no one else has the right to call themselves God's children, but those who received Jesus in faith. So brothers and sisters, if we shift our attention away from Jesus, even in the name of the Spirit or the Father, what we're actually doing is twisting and corrupting our vision of the triune God.

[12:01] And we end up dishonoring each person of the Trinity and their distinctive roles rather than honoring them. because the Father and the Spirit want us to focus our attention on the Son and to join in to our fellowship with them through Him.

[12:21] Okay, but what does all this have to do with the book of Zechariah? Well, nothing and everything in a sense. We're not really going to be talking about the Trinity this morning, but we are once again going to be focusing in on Jesus.

[12:35] This passage is all about Jesus. Jesus is the one the whole Bible is about. It's about who He is and why He came, how special and unique He is.

[12:47] And the main take-home of the passage, I think, is quite simple. Let's love Jesus more in response to what we read in God's Word this morning. Isn't He wonderful?

[12:59] Aren't we thankful to God for sending His Son to us? Aren't we thankful to the Holy Spirit for opening our eyes to enable us to see Jesus more clearly?

[13:11] That's what this passage is about. In a sense, because that's what every passage in the Bible is about. Okay, but there are riches to look at in this passage and I want to begin with a question for you just about one of the riches.

[13:25] Take a look at the last line of verse 12 and the first line of verse 13. And He shall build the temple of the Lord. It is He who shall build the temple of the Lord.

[13:42] Why don't you turn to the person next to you and just talk about this question. Why do you think in verses 12 and 13 we get almost exactly the same line repeated? Right?

[13:52] Doesn't it seem a bit redundant? He shall build the temple of the Lord as He who build the temple of the Lord? Right? We're not trying to save space here. Why is it repeated? I'm sure you're freezing cold. So just try and wake up, turn to the person next to you and have a ponder together for a moment.

[14:17] Right. You got any ideas? Someone be brave. Put their hand up. You can put it up inside your coat if you like. Because verse 12 emphasises that the temple is going to be built and then verse 13 is emphasising that it is He who is going to build it.

[14:35] Okay. Yeah, maybe. Emphasising the temple is going to be built and then it's He who is going to build it. Good thought. Any other suggestions? Do I repeat something if it's actually drunk that it's not that you build the temple and you will build the temple?

[14:50] Yeah, yeah. Just so you don't miss it. Yeah, repeat it. That's absolutely. Yep. The spiritual temple. Yeah.

[15:00] That's really interesting. Yeah. Good. One more? Okay. Before the first piece of the temple it's going to be what I'll have to do.

[15:13] Yeah, yeah. Okay, great. Let me tell you what I reckon. I think what we've got is another chiasm or mirror pattern.

[15:25] Do you remember over the last few weeks we've been working through Zechariah's eight visions like this, right? And we noticed they were arranged like this in this sort of A, B, C, D, D, C, B, A pattern, right?

[15:39] That's often called a chiasm or a mirror or something like that. It's all about God returning to his temple and then sin leaving. At the center of the visions is one about Joshua the high priest being cleansed and one about Zerubbabel the Davidic governor rebuilding the temple.

[15:58] Okay, which is of course going to be very important for what we're about to read now. Well, now as we reach Zechariah chapter 6 verses 9 to 15 this little section is arranged in a chiasm too.

[16:10] So again, let me show you with a couple of slides. First, this is just the text written out. Okay, this is Zechariah 6 9 to 15. I don't know if you can see all of that.

[16:21] Now I'm just going to put boxes around the different sections and color them in. And lastly, let's arrange them just so it makes it look really obvious. So hopefully you can see again at the top you've got the word of the Lord and at the bottom you've got the voice of the Lord.

[16:40] Then in the green at the top Zechariah is sent by the Lord and at the bottom he says you will know that I have been sent by the Lord. In the green you've got the exiles named twice, right?

[16:52] Again, which is kind of an odd feature. Held I to Bajah, Jediah, etc. But they're all kind of named twice although slightly confusingly different. Slight differences and used in variations of the names but anyway, they are named twice.

[17:05] Then in the gold you've got the crown. In the purple you've got the priesthood. In the blue you've got the royal rule of the branch. And in the center you've got this verse or this phrase repeated twice, you see, he shall build the temple of the Lord.

[17:22] Does that make sense? It's pretty cool, isn't it? It's almost like someone thought about writing this really carefully and well and beautifully. So that is the structure of this passage.

[17:35] After Zachariah's eight visions on what must have been a fairly sleepless night I imagine, finally Zachariah has woken up in a sweat probably from these eight night visions and the Lord has a job for him.

[17:48] And this is really the climax of everything we've seen before. This is where all the visions have been heading if you like. Okay, so pick it up in verse nine and we'll just start working our way through. Zachariah says, And the word of the Lord came to me, take from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah, and Jediah who have arrived from Babylon and go the same day to the house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah.

[18:10] Take from them silver and gold and make a crown and set it on the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak the high priest. So as the passage begins God wants Zachariah to perform a sign act and a sign act.

[18:25] This is a symbolic ritual kind of like when Jesus in the New Testament washes his disciples' feet or when he breathes on them and says receive the Holy Spirit. They're a fairly common thing in biblical prophecy.

[18:38] So one of my favorites actually is in 1 Kings chapter 22 when a false prophet named Zedekiah makes horns for himself and tells Ahab thus says the Lord with these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed.

[18:56] He sort of gallops around the thing. Now the whole thing is nonsense Ahab ends up getting killed by the Syrians but I just love the idea of Zedekiah galloping around the room with a fake pair of horns on his head looking like an idiot.

[19:09] Anyway there are lots of other ones right? Ezekiel you might remember builds a whole model city of Jerusalem and then lies down next to it for 390 days and then in the New Testament Agabus takes Paul's belt remember and ties his hands with it sort of handcuffs him with it as a sign of his impending arrest.

[19:30] So there are lots of these kinds of things these sign acts across the scriptures and that's the kind of thing we've got here. Zechariah is to go and meet these men who have just arrived from Babylon they are probably priests we don't know much about them but their names appear in lists of priests.

[19:47] So Zechariah is to go and meet these 3 priests he is to take from them silver and gold presumably a contribution a gift from the Jews who are still in exile in Babylon and then they're all to go and meet with this bloke Josiah and melt down all the silver and gold to make a crown with it.

[20:09] Now the Hebrew word for a crown there is actually in the plural form some of you might have a footnote but don't let that confuse you. I think the ESV has made the right call here. There's only one crown in view it's just that sometimes Hebrew uses the plural form to talk about things that are composed of various parts you know so singular things that are composed of various parts like a face actually the word for face always occurs in the plural in Hebrew because a face has like multiple features so you might say this is my faces right but that sounds weird to us but that's just how they sort of grammar so I think it would be suitable for a crown composed of silver and gold to be described this way or again sometimes just Hebrew grammar the plural form is used to intensify the kind of eminence or the majesty of something maybe a bit like the royal we the way in English we use a royal we we are not amused so perhaps what's being meant here by the use of the plural is just to kind of emphasize that this was a super spectacular crown a majestic crown anyway something like that but I do think it's very important to understand that there's only one crown on view here and look at what happens to the crown right so in verse 11 once they've made the crown

[21:31] Zachariah is told to set it on the head of Joshua the high priest now this is very unusual okay so high priest did wear a sort of tiara thing on the front of their turbans but that's not what this is this is a royal word it's a royal symbol which begs the question why would Zachariah be told to crown a priest surely it would be more appropriate to crown Zerubbabel right the governor in the line of David instead of Joshua the priest to add to this if that doesn't seem strange to you let me just fill you in there were 12 tribes in ancient Israel descended from the 12 sons of Jacob the priests in Israel were all sons of Aaron from the tribe of Levi you could not be a priest if you did not belong to the tribe of Levi meanwhile the kings of Israel were from the tribe of Judah and they were all sons of

[22:39] David meaning in ancient Israel at this time there was no way that a priest could also be a king so that is what is so shocking about this sign act you see this little ritual what could this possibly mean a priest being proclaimed a king well then in verse 12 thankfully Zechariah is told to speak rituals always need words to explain them so Zechariah is told to say to Joshua thus says the Lord of hosts behold the man whose name is the branch for he shall branch out from his place and he shall build the temple of the Lord now you remember we've already seen the branch before in Zechariah it was back in chapter 3 verse 8 chapter 3 verse 8 hear now oh Joshua the high priest you and your friends who sit before you for they are men who are a sign behold I will bring my servant the branch when the angel of the

[23:43] Lord spoke to Joshua that's what he said I think Nathan might have been preaching on that passage for us and we talked about the fact that the branch is a special title taken from Isaiah and Jeremiah again concerning the Davidic king okay so for instance in Jeremiah chapter 23 the Lord says woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture declares the Lord therefore thus says the Lord the God of Israel concerning the shepherds who care for my people you have scattered my flock and have driven them away and you have not attended to them behold I will attend to you for your evil deeds declares the Lord then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and I will bring them back to their fold and they shall be fruitful and multiply I will set shepherds over them who will care for them and they shall fear no more nor be dismayed neither shall any be missing declares the Lord behold the days are coming declares the Lord when I will raise up for David a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land in his days

[24:52] Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely and this is the name by which he will be called the Lord is our righteousness all right so there are these are the kinds of passages that are in the background here!

[25:07] Jeremiah is in the line of David who would bring an end to the exile and usher in a new golden age of safety and peace for God's people which means you see again the question is why would Zachariah be crowning a priest Joshua and identifying him as the branch of course he's not saying that Joshua is the branch but he's performing a sign act on Joshua pointing forward to the branch to come will the new Davidic king really be a priest too and of course it's then that we're told he shall build the temple of the Lord which again is strange because back in chapter 4 we were told that Zerubbabel would build the temple of the Lord remember

[26:07] Zechariah chapter 4 verse 9 the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house his hands shall also complete it so why is Joshua being depicted here as the builder of the temple I think we should imagine the people standing around thinking surely there must be some mistake Zechariah you know fuddy duddy what is he doing he's fluffed this illustration completely surely he should be crowning Zerubbabel surely Zerubbabel is the branch Zerubbabel is the one who is going to rebuild the temple and in some ways I think some of that is right I mean Zerubbabel is from David's line and he is going to rebuild the temple it's possible that Zerubbabel was away at this point on an expedition and that part of what Joshua is showing is that Zerubbabel is going to return and he's going to rebuild the temple but there must be something more going on here as well you see because although

[27:12] Zerubbabel fits the bill in some ways in others he is totally inadequate most importantly Zerubbabel was not a priest and he never could be a priest and so this sign act must be pointing to someone much greater than Zerubbabel you'll never guess who it is whoever the true branch really is and there will be no surprises at the end of this talk you all know who he is but for now whoever this mysterious fellow could be he'll have to be some kind of amazing unique bloke how could he possibly be both a king and a priest so we've come to the centre of the passage and then we're turning a corner things are going to start getting repeated now but with a different spin on them as we kind of move out again and if I can sum up the two halves of this passage like this the first half of the passage and I think this actually gets to some of the stuff you were saying the first half of this passage I think is about telling us that a priest is going to be a king a priest is going to be a king and in the second half of the passage what we're going to be told is that a king is going to be a priest or that that king is going to be a priest you see what I mean so it's going to be same same but different coming from both angles as it were and I think the point of this beautiful chiasm this beautiful structure is to make is to kind of do that for us to double up all the themes to intermingle the two major themes in this beautiful way so that the whole thing is both doubled and one you know what I mean so in verse 13 it is he who shall build the temple of the lord now the word for temple there is actually not the usual word for a temple or for god's house again it is specifically a royal word meaning a palace we would we would use the word palace or something like that in other words the emphasis is on god's kingly rule the priest king this branch is not going to establish his own rule independent of god of course not he is going to build god's palace so that god will actually be the one ruling the heart of his nation and so now this priest we're told will bear royal honor and he shall sit on his throne and then as we move into the last part of verse 13 or the purple box i don't think it's up there anymore but literally verse 13 just says and he shall be a priest on his throne in other words we're not talking about someone different here and we're still talking about the branch and the branch shall be a priest on his throne you see he will be the king and he will be a priest in other words it's the same point we saw in the first half of the passage only in reverse in the first half of the passage we started with joshua and we were told that a priest would be the king and now we're being told that the branch the king he will be a priest and hence the conclusion in verse 13 and the council of peace shall be between them both which is to say that the office of priest and king will be perfectly one and somehow the barrier between judah and levi or between aaron and david will be overcome in one priest king there will no longer be sort of two centers of power in the nation the kind of priestly power and the kingly power we might talk about church and state that's not a perfect analogy but these two things are going to become perfectly one under this new priest king so in verse 14

[31:12] then the crown is to be taken off joshua and placed in the temple as a reminder or memorial now have a think about this because this is very significant because of course at this point the temple has not been built yet and it will only be built when Zerubbabel rebuilds it which begs the question why would the crown need to be kept in the temple after Zerubbabel rebuilds it you see again it means the crown cannot be for Zerubbabel it has to be for someone well beyond Zerubbabel it points to the fact that Zerubbabel isn't the ultimate branch that the crown was made for and likewise the temple that Zerubbabel is going to build can't be the ultimate temple that the branch is going to build do you see because the crown is going to be kept in

[32:14] Zerubbabel's temple as a memorial or as a reminder that a greater branch is coming who will really be the one to wear the crown and who will in fact build a whole new temple far more glorious than Zerubbabel's little sort of placeholder and I think this must affect how we read verse 15 as well see verse 15 and those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the Lord now sort of thinking about the chiastic structure of the passage again remember back at the beginning of the passage it was the exiles the Jews who were still living in Babylon who were far off who provided the silver and the gold to make the crown and presumably part of what Zechariah is promising here is that one day soon those very same exiles are going to come back and help rebuild Zerubbabel's temple but more importantly again by now we must be looking forward to the future far more wonderful and exciting temple and so they are going to foreshadow

[33:24] Zechariah is looking forward to a people far off I think not just in space but also in time he's talking about us the people who will build that temple with the new branch the future far more glorious temple so finally though Zechariah says and this shall come to pass if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God in other words this final verse makes this whole passage simultaneously both a promise and a challenge so it is a promise there is certainly a promise here that God is going to do what he has said in this passage but it's also a challenge I think because God's plan is to work through his people's obedience and if we don't obey then we will not be able to participate in God's salvation purposes that was true of Zechariah's generation they had to get on with the work of rebuilding the temple as a kind of placeholder for what was to come as a foreshadowing the whole thing if you like was to stand as a token

[34:32] I don't really know if there's a word for it it's not a memorial but it's like a premorial remembering the future the hope a token something pointing forward to the better temple to come they had to be obedient but likewise so do we okay so as we wrap up I want to finish hopefully by stating the obvious again brothers and sisters why do we love Jesus well because of who he is and what he came to do and of course in this passage the point is that Jesus is the high priest greater than Joshua he's the one mediator between God and man who made the ultimate sacrifice in order to make us right with God and astonishingly Jesus is also the king greater than Zerubbabel he is the long-awaited branch the Messiah in the line of David God's representative on earth so we love and adore and worship

[35:34] Jesus because he is our great priest king and what did he come to do well he came to build the true temple didn't he and in fact last week we talked about the temple as his body but at another kind of layer of fulfillment he is still building the true temple isn't he his church we are the dwelling place for God even this morning God is with us in our hearts remember how Paul puts it in Ephesians chapter 2 he says speaking to Gentiles you are you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit remember last week the temple is about three things the presence of God the mercy of God and the rule of God the presence of God the mercy of God and the rule of God well now the church is to be the place where all of those things happen we come together to meet with

[36:59] God to be in his presence through his word we come to receive his grace and mercy as we embrace his word the gospel of the crucified son and we come to live under the rule of God as we hear and obey his righteous and wise and good commandments and we can each play our part in building the temple can't we we are those who are once far off who have now been brought near to speak the truth in love to one another to keep building one another and to reach the lost so that we are as it were being cemented together by love and truth by the Holy Spirit we are being built into a temple that can never be destroyed even the one Zerubbabel built was destroyed and then they rebuilt another one that old stone temple kept dying and rising again people had to raise it up again but finally

[38:01]  Jesus is building a temple that can never be destroyed an imperishable temple that we all belong to cemented together by love and truth let's pray loving father god we come to you in the name of our lord jesus we thank you so much for him that he is our great high priest who mediates for us perfectly through whom we can call ourselves our children you call us your children we pray that you would listen to our prayers because of our lord jesus and his righteousness and what he's done for us we pray father that you would build his temple your temple here among us keep adding to our number daily those you have chosen to save and keep helping each of us to grow in love for one another and our knowledge of the truth so that we are more and more mature together and bring glory to you as your holy temple we pray in jesus name amen