If we were to look out across the city of the Church with spiritual eyes, from a distance we would see a massive, sprawling metropolis; a place full of people and movement and excitement. However, move but a bit closer and the metropolis is seen to be nothing more than an unfinished city. Here and there there are houses, offices, and skyscrapers that have been only partially built. See, a house with no roof or doorway; another with only three walls and no furnishings; another with only the framework set up, scaffolding abandoned in the yard. Or look to the downtown, where a large office building is full or furniture soaked and rotting due to the lack of siding. Yet still the inhabitants live as if all is well, wondering why they are battered by the storms that pass and why the houses they have built shirt upon their foundations. Occasionally there is a building that collapses and crushes a number of the people living there due to a lack of care in the construction.
In fact, not long past nearly 50 were killed when a cathedral collapsed and they were buried beneath it. It was found that
the supports and beams had been held together by only glue and string rather than screws or nails. The day after that sad event an elderly woman’s doorway collapsed and she has used her window to exit the building for the last several weeks. All of this the people chalk up to the dangers of life and live on, mourning the losses but never heeding the cause.
What would your reaction be to such a city? Would you laugh and mock them for their foolishness in not improving the place? Perhaps weep at their blindness and its cost? Or would your anger flare up at such reckless living? And what if you were a citizen there? What then, oh men and women of the church, for surely that is your city! Here you reside and here you spend your life. What shall you do when you see the estate of your beloved home?
Many of you are the ones in those half-completed homes. Some have barely escaped the collapse of home or church and have come away severely wounded. Others, blessed few, dwell in those rare completed dwellings. What are you to do, who are in this city? You cannot flee it and begin anew somewhere else! All the rest of the earth is a wasteland full with death and darkness. Oh how many have been lost as they left these walls, crumbling though they are!
But let us step back for a moment and ask how this city was brought to such a low estate.
Once, some time long past, it was nothing more than a small village of a few humble but sturdy cottages in which lived a small group of people who followed the example of their founder. Theirs was a simple yet joyful existence and people were added to their numbers daily, drawn by the love and the fellowship amongst the brothers and sisters who dwelt there.
Over time the village grew and gained popularity as a place to stop by. More and more came as it became a town and eventually a growing city, yet somewhere along the way many things were cast aside and forgotten. Some decided to ignore the rules laid out by the master as to the materials to use when building, thinking that gold and fine jewels to be far too expensive (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). Others built on spots that had been previously forbidden due to impurities the master had seen in the earth there. Still others built by their own strength and will, ignoring the edict that no building would be allowed to stand whose construction had not been overseen by the Chief Foreman. Many began to build without planning for the time and cost of the construction, and so were left with only partial shelters. (Luke 14:28-29) At first these practices were frowned upon and a number of people were cast out until they would abide by the law, but eventually prominent people in the communities began to petition their fellow citizens to allow some bending of the rules to enable merchants to set up shops that would sell goods that had previously been unavailable. They succeeded in convincing the majority of the city’s inhabitants that the rules had been meant as general guidelines, and slowly it became a normal thing to see a family constructing a home on the edge of the nearby swampland or a young man building a particularly large home only to run out of resources and be left with a half-constructed and rickety shelter.
Do you understand this analogy, my brothers and sisters? Oh, I pray you do! This is the state of the church today; we are a city made up of half-made buildings built upon shifting foundations and we wonder why it is that we see so many of the church’s leaders falling into terrible sin. We are amazed at how easily people turn from God when trouble enters their lives, we balk at the statistics that say we are no different than the world around us, and we wonder why it is that there are so many who mock us. Look about you! Do you not see the state the church is in? Christ himself declared, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
It should come as no surprise to hear of churches collapsing or splitting if their foundations are not Christ, their timber not the Gospel, and their walls, roofs, and floors not faith, hope, and love. And how will home or office stand if the Word of God is not the nails which holds it together? What a wretched estate! We have forgotten and scorned the words and commands of him who founded this great city by His very blood. Return, oh church, return! Be as Israel when the scrolls of the law where found and read and the people repented with great weeping and fasting! We may yet restore this city to the glory befitting its king.
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