Elevation with Steven Furtick - Stop Crying, It's Coming!

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

The best is still to come. In “Stop Crying, It’s Coming,” Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church challenges us to stop fixating on what we’ve lost and start focusing on what comes next.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Right now, I don't know what y'all want to do on the instruments, but we're going to take 21 seconds for the year 2021, and we're going to praise God for his mighty power and his awesome work. And we're going to do it in Gaston and Concord and Lake Norman and Valentine. We're going to do it in our bedrooms and kitchens and living rooms and cars. Praise them on the treadmill.

Some of y'all got a podcast going. Just hollering the gym. They won't throw you out. I'm running and not growing weary. I'm walking in a will not be. I give you a breath. Didn't that feel good? Let's get those hands out of those pockets and start clapping.

Like you're clapping the devil's stiff. It's back. It's back. It's back. It's back. I'm so excited to preach. I broke my mic and I hadn't even read my scripture. So let me start the sermon now.

Welcome, everybody. to Elevation Church. I'm going to share with you today this scripture. I had a substitute preacher ready because my voice was tired from preaching on this tour. But it was almost like a battle of two voices because the voice of God was speaking to me. And I was like, well, I'll preach this week. Somebody needs this word. The Lord brought me here.

for you. Do you believe God loves you that much that he would make sure you were here to hear this? I totally believe that. I want to preach for a moment from Haggai chapter two. Graham said, are you preaching this week? Dad? I said, I think so. God's speaking to me. And he said, from Luke 5? Because that's what I've been preaching in church and I preached it out there. I said, no son, not from Luke 5. He said, let's go. He was so tired of hearing about Simon and the Nets in the boats. Chris didn't get tired of it one time. Chris got saved every night on the Elevation Knights Tour. He rededicated, sanctified, Spiritville. He was walking around, speaking in tongues backstage. David was eating grapes. Tiffany's about the only pure one on the

worship team. Don't let their smiles for me. I love this scripture. It's such a powerful prophecy and a promise for us. Listen to this. Haggai 2. That's three books from the back of the Bible. You'd be better off to start, or back of the old tip. So go to the Matthew, go back three books. That's Haggai. It'd be the easiest way to find it if you like to flip. Or look at the screens, lazy bones. In the second year of King Darius, on the 21st day of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. The word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. Speak to Zoroababal, son of Shialteal, governor of Judah, to Joshua, son of Josadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people. Ask them, who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory?

How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? But now, be strong, Zerubabel. Be strong, Zerubabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, Joshua, son of Josadak, the high priest. Be strong. Say your name. Say it in the chat right now. Be strong, Stephen. Say your name. Be strong. Because you have to talk to yourself this way, all right? God's not always going to have a Haggai following you around telling you can do it. So say it, say, be strong and say your name. Say, be strong.

Be strong, be strong. All you peoples of the land declares the Lord. And work, for I am with you, declares the Lord Almighty. This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my spirit remains among you. Do not fear. This is what the Lord. Almighty says in a little while won't be long it might be happening right now it might

happen before you get home today in a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth the sea and the dry land I will shake all nations and what is desired by all nations will come and I will fill this house with Says the Lord Almighty, the silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord Almighty, and the crypto and the Bitcoin is all mine. Declare whatever they make, I trade in it. I am the Lord Almighty. Glory of this present house be greater than the glory of the former house,

says the Lord Almighty, and in this place I will grant. Peace. This place declares the Lord Almighty. Not declares Pastor Stephen. I wouldn't give you $2 for what I say. But when God says it, and this is the word God said to say to you today, you ready? God said to tell you, and this is my title, Stop Crying is Coming. Stop crying is coming.

Stop crying. is coming. You may be seated. Well, so we got to talk about temples. That's what's happening in Haggai, too. They're rebuilding the temple, the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. It's been in ruins for over 50 years because the people of God got carried off to Babylon. He gave a little history lesson real quick. Just a little one, just a little one, just a little context. Every blessing has a context. So you don't want to just shout over something that you don't understand the context that it's set in. Very important to understand that they've been in Babylon because they were carried off. Not of their own choice, but they've been in Babylon.

When Psalm says that by the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept. They actually hung up their harps and their electric guitars and their tailors and their Martins. hung it all up on the willow tree, which represents weeping, and they wept for 70 years. So what we're stepping into in Haggai Chapter 2 is much more than just a rebuilding. I hesitate to use that word because it's so pop culture and it's so buzzy. It almost certain words right now just make you feel sick to hear them all over again. We're going to rebuild this nation and we're going to rebuild this economy and we're going to rebuild. We're going to build it back better, praise God.

And that's not the hype right here. This is the hope, the hope, the hope, the hope, not the hype, not the hype, but the hope is that they are going to rebuild the temple. But really, really, they are going to reinvent their template. And what comes to mind when I say template will depend on your background. If you're like in a computer background, a template means one thing. If you use machinery and stuff, they use metal and wood as a template for a pattern to build something. Or if there's really any geniuses in here, it's even in DNA.

And in genetic code, we talk about the template. But understanding this will really help us to know what Haggai had to do to encourage the people. Because this temple that they're rebuilding that was destroyed, which represented the center of Jews, Jewish life in Jerusalem was completely unfamiliar to one generation. They had only heard about it. They never saw it. The only people who saw Solomon's Temple, which was awesome, and I'll tell you a little bit about it in about 45 seconds, but the only ones who saw it are now senior citizens.

That's important, but let's talk about Solomon's Temple. so grand that one historian said half of the gold in the world at the time of Solomon was used to overlay the temple. Half of the world's gold. I started studying about it. I said, what would you need half the gold in the world for to build a temple? I mean, can't God meet you anywhere? He met the Israelites in the tent in the wilderness. He didn't need a bunch of gold to meet with the people. I mean, he'll meet with you. Some of you, you met God, not somewhere in a church service, but you met God on the kitchen floor trying to crawl to the toilet to throw up, promising God, I will never do it again if you will get me through this or if you will let the test be negative. I will never do it again.

I know it's early to be in your business, but you can meet God anywhere. I mean, anywhere. Meet God throwing up in a toilet bowl, but here's this temple that God gave his people. and he wanted it built that way because he's great and he's glorious. The silver is his. The gold is his. He doesn't mind any of that. I had a guy coming to church one time.

He said, I would get baptized, but I don't want to stop driving my nice car. I said, who told you that? He said, there was a preacher one time that said, if I wanted to give it, I had to sell everything and follow him. I said, did the preacher? They told you that because the guy was rich. And apparently he had some preacher that was trying to build a building for the church. So he's trying to work this guy saying, well, now, if you really want to be a sincere, Christian, the proof of your sincerity is poverty. So you got to sell everything and give it to God.

Lord said, I'm not stuck in your scarcity. I can bless you so much with my runover. Ask the disciples, God bless them so much off of five loaves of bread and two fish that they had to carry home leftovers. God said you will break your back trying to carry home what is left over if you will seek me first. Not just money, but peace of mind, don't you want that? But meaning and purpose and significance that goes past this present, evil age, I feel like preaching and telling somebody God's got it. God's got it. Anyway, it's a lot of gold, right? The candlesticks were made of gold, five on each side of the altar in Solomon's temple,

the basins were made of gold. You know the tongs that they would pick up the coals with? Those were made a gold. This is how crazy God is. Even the hinges on the doors were made a gold. That's extravagant. That was Solomon's temple. That was Solomon's temple. That is not the temple that is being built in Haggai, too. It's a different temple, and it requires a different template. You know, psychologically speaking right now, you have a template that is formed, they tell me this anyway, by the neural pathways and associations in our brain. And really our template is based on familiarity, not always truth. What feels true to you might not be actually true.

it may just be your template. Everybody say template. Template. Now, imagine this. The prophet Haggai, we don't know anything about this guy. He's got some leaders, the Joshua, who comes from the line of Aaron, who was the first high priest, Moses's brother. You might remember hearing his name one time. Moses was like, I can't speak God.

He's like, here comes Aaron. He'll speak. You shut up and do what I tell you to do. Here's your staff, because God always send you what you need. And so that's who Joshua, son of Josadak is. He's from that priestly line of Aaron. And then there's Zerubababelle, who's a governor. Now, here's something that will help you to know.

The king at the time is called Darius. This is before he started hooty and the blowfish. Darius was the... I just got to keep you all awake during this history lesson because y'all kind of shifting around like, oh, when's he going to preach? I hear a sermon. This is the sermon, okay?

Because every blessing has a context. Every blessing has a context. And so Darius wasn't even supposed to be king, but there was a coup when the Persians took over Babylon. The Persian king, his name was Cyrus. He sent the Jews back. He's like, I want you all to like me, so y'all can go rebuild whatever you want. And that's who is back in Jerusalem, more specifically in the southern kingdom of Judah, rebuilding. 60,000 of them, they come back and they start rebuilding the temple.

Because for the Jewish people, their template, the way they saw it, their model was that spirituality should be the center of life, not the periphery. We are almost in the day where I preach the exact opposite. For us, spirituality is like the last thing that we consider when we're, we're going to be. making decisions. We will sooner move to a city based on the climate than we will based on the church. Lord Jesus, you didn't tell me it's going to be this quiet. You didn't tell me my church turned Presbyterian when I took one week off to go on the road. You know what I noticed on Corona? You know what I noticed? I would see people and it's not fine. I don't care. You wear a mask. You don't wear a mask. I'm not here to talk to you about that. I'm not a doctor.

But what I would notice is I would see people everywhere. No mask. Mask off. Future style. Everybody mascot, everywhere, and I come up to them and we'd be at a ball game, a restaurant, a movie, a mall, anything. And I say, have you been back to church? Y'all in the building ought to help me with this. You're here. I'm talking to them. This is a chance for you to be sophisticated and superior. Nah, we haven't made it back to church, but you made it to the ball field.

No, we haven't made it back to church because for us, our template, our cultural template, the pattern of the this world is, yeah, God is an add-on. God is an app. And Scripture is a salad bar and I pick what I want. That's our template. It doesn't matter what's true. Oh, no, no, you got to live your truth. What if your truth is trash? It's the fleece, y'all. It's the fleece. I'm burning up. And so they know before we can rebuild the walls, which Nehemiah will come along later and start to do, not without opposition. Before we can rebuild the economy, we've got to build this temple. But they get discouraged in the work, you know, because it doesn't look like the old one.

It doesn't look like the one we heard about. This is the temple? Man, I thought it would be better than this. You make your decision to follow Christ, and then he doesn't give you a raise by next Monday. This is Christianity? I'm sorry, you have a bad template if you just think that God exists to deck your temple out in gold everywhere. That is not all God is.

You know what Bible verse I love? John 1135. How many of y'all need to memorize more scriptures? Less football stats, chunks, and more scriptures. Fantasy football. God, if I could just take some of y'all's heads and put three Bible verses. So we'll start. We'll start today. Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps. All right, because you don't do it once. John 1135, put it on the screen, and Jesus wept. Now, look, it's not even, the week hasn't even started yet, and you memorize the whole scripture. Give yourself a hand.

Come on, that's good. That's good. That's good. Jesus wept. Jesus wept. You're like, well, what does that have to do over the temple? Because it's all about expectation, right? In John 1135, Jesus is going to see these sisters named Mary and Martha, and their brother died, and Jesus

didn't show up when they thought he would or when they thought he should and he could and they thought he should but he didn't and they were crying they were crying now Jesus did not say to the sisters what your dad might have said to you that my dad would say to me if you don't stop crying finish it I will give you you you're like traumatized I felt trauma. Your shoulders got tense when you said, ah! He didn't say that? He wept with them.

He wept with them. He weeps with me. He knows my disappointments. They don't have to stay hidden. I can bring them right out in the light of day. because he knows the deeper disappointment behind the disappointment that created the disappointment. He knows the descendants of my disappointment. He knows what disappointment, led to what disappointment?

Jesus did an ancestry tree on all the things I'm frustrated about, and he sees all of that. He knows the real template that's driving my behavior. He knows the same about you. He knows why, watch this, you push people away who are trying to love you. You don't even know why you do that yet. It's a mystery to you. You don't even know why yet when things get good in your life, you find some way to screw them up. And he knows why.

It's because you figure rather than let somebody else take it away from me, like happened last time, I'll just take it away from myself. I will take my ball and go home. I will take my blessing and go home. So watch this. If your template is every relationship ends in pain or betrayal, if that is your template, you will start creating the very thing that you fear to avoid being surprised by it ever again, if that's your template. The template of these people was a temple that had so much gold,

that they had to start putting gold in weird places, like the wash basin. They made Solomon's temple's wash basin gold just because God is that glorious. So then they start building the new one. Ah, we're going to build a temple. Oh, we're going to get our life together. Oh, we're going to lose 20 pounds. You know what the hard thing about keeping weight off is? Nobody congratulates you for not putting it back on.

You've lost weight. Nobody has ever said to me, you still look decent. It's been six years and you haven't fluctuated. Your jeans look the same size. That's awesome. Good job. Nobody compliments you when the jeans stay the same size. That's what's difficult.

Is they're not just rebuilding it? a temple, God is reinventing their template and their identity. They've been in Babylon so long they have forgotten the songs of Zion. They've been on pandemic, on church online, so long that they don't even remember how to be in a crowd without being scared of catching their death around people. Do you see why I have no patience with people that say the Bible isn't relevant to our day? is this not us? Is this not us? Not only have you been rebuilding what was destroyed in the last two years,

you've had to reinvent. You have the same title, but it's a completely different template for your job. I talked to the campus pastors when they were calling church members and we couldn't pray for people and lay hands on them. I said, this sucks for you, doesn't it? You signed up to do ministry with people, and now you're basically running a call center. Because you can't touch.

And touch was your template for ministry. It was so hard to reinvent. It's been hard for me to reinvent my identity as a pastor. For years, my adult identity for my ego was just like in high school. It was how much do you bench press? But then as a pastor is how many people come to your church. So I went from bench to attendance. Oh yeah, you got 10,000.

I remember those days. Small beginnings It's all right. Don't be discouraged. I'll tell you, the Lord, the Lord will give you 20. Can I get a 30? Can I get a 40?

Can I get a 50? Wait a man. Wait, man. Now are you talking about it? I was coming up in the church wondering, would anybody come back? I mean, after training, behavior, you know, I'm not fussing at anybody that comes online,

because really, really, really, God has given us a template for ministry now that we, We can reach you wherever you are. I praise God for it. I mean, there's some places we can't put a building, but I can preach the Bible. And we can watch this. I'm about to say something cool. Y'all clap.

God can give you a breakthrough where there is no church building. So now God is expanding the territory of the church. I hear from Zimbabwe about this ministry. And South Paulo, Brazil, I hear from everywhere. I hear from Kentucky. God is good. Sometimes God says your template is too small for what I want to do. This is not a temple built by human hands.

This is a temple that his name in heaven is unknown to men, but it is revealed to us. It is a shadow of Jesus Christ. Wow. All that is in this text, yeah. It's a text about reinventing. It's a text about temples. It's a text about templates. It's a text about trauma.

It's a text about tears. And there's a time for tears. If sadness was a sin, Jesus couldn't have died for yours because he cried. Disappointment doesn't make you wrong. Anger doesn't make you wrong. There is just as much of a danger of stuffing it. and letting it come out sideways, then letting it out. That's why I hate to hear a preacher say,

you don't need therapy and counseling. All you need is the Holy Ghost. The blood is on our hands when we talk like that. Because God uses all of that in people's lives. It's all a part of the process that he uses. Matter of fact, that's so dumb. Let's take that to the extreme. You don't need airplanes.

All you need is the Holy Ghost. I don't see any preachers fly into their preaching engagements with their own wings. So stupid. God uses stuff. And even in the text I read it said the Word of the Lord came through Haggai. Sometimes the help that you need, the healing that you need comes through people. Sometimes even, you know, like I treat my daughter different than my sons. And sometimes I have to catch myself because they'll remind me, you are too easy on Abby. It wasn't like that for us.

And they're right. For them, it was dry it up. For her, you know, it's like, I'll buy you one. Don't worry about it. What's wrong with me? Yeah. It's different raising boys and boys. It's like a different template. It's different. So what God is trying to get the people to do in Haggai, too, is not just to build what they had before, but to get ready for something better.

All right. So all this time you're spending, wishing that it would be like it was before, is completely wasted. Because God's not going to make it what it was before. Because if he listened to you and made it what it was before, he couldn't make it better. And the Bible says that we go from glory to glory as we are being transformed by the image of God. Not your image of what God is supposed to be like. Not your template of what you were told God was like when you were seven. Not your template of what men have always been or women have always been or church has always been. God is not consulting your template.

It will be according to His truth. God, what is your truth? That's what I want to be my blueprint. I've got to get in the Word and find out what God said about me before what people said about me became a faulty template to keep me trapped and buried in the rubble of yesterday. It's going to be better. It's going to be better.

It's going to be better. And sometimes the enemy of better is not bad. It's before. Haggai shows up. The people have gotten so discouraged building the temple, externally and internally. Because there's resistance on the outside, and there's disappointment on the inside.

And both are happening to you right now. It's almost impossible to live in this world, own a smartphone, and not be an idiot. Everything is against us. You know what I'm saying? And it's a little bit of both. There's a little bit of you. It's a little bit of the world.

It's a little bit of the devil. It's just this perfect storm. All right. And you're not just rebuilding. You're reinventing. Not just for those of us in a midlife crisis. But for everybody, you are always reinventing. That's the nature of it.

Or you're dead. Or you're reinventing. Or you're dead. That's your two options. So the Lord gave me these things I want to teach. We don't have time to go through all of them today. But I heard a rumor y'all are coming back next week. I heard that.

Go ahead and put it on your schedule and tell her, I can't next week. I've got to hear the rest of this sermon, but let me give you. Can I give you what I can give you today? Can I give you what I give you today? Okay, okay, okay, okay. four hours of reinvention. And I want to call your attention to as many of them as I can in the time we have left. And they're all from the text. And the first one is a word you may not hear a lot. It's in verse two where God told Haggai, speak to Zarrabababelle. I thought

it was so cool. Zarubabel. Everybody say it. Zerabababelle. You need a baby name. You've been praying for one. There you go. I've just throw that in your bag for free, all right? That comes with the happy meal. There's a rubble bell. I thought it was cool how his name said rubble in it. Almost, if you slits the letters around. It sounds like rubble. That's what they were looking at.

The city was still burned. It didn't look like it used to look. And that's a sad thing to look around at your life, on your bank account, or people that used to be there for you, all of that and go, where did it go? Because we're back from Babylon, but we're not exactly living in Zion, at least not how it used to be, at least not how we heard about it.

We're back. We love God. We're here for it. We're doing what we can, but it's not exactly what we thought it would be. And so God tells Haggai, he has a word for him. He has a word for him. The word of the Lord came through Haggai, speak to Zorubabel, son of Shialteal, governor of Judah, to Joshua, son of Josadegh, the high priest. and to the remnant. That's the first word I want you to write in your phone. Remnant. Remnant. The remnant. It means what's left.

It means the small part that stayed. When you find yourself in a period of reinvention and nothing seems familiar and nothing seems normal and nothing makes sense and nothing matches your prior map of meaning or knowledge, nothing looks like where you've been before and you're looking at it going, where's the gold, where's the temple we heard about, where's all the stuff that used to happen, or if your body's starting to ache in ways that it didn't ache when you were 24 and you're figuring out how to work around that, God said, speak to the remnant. The remnant. The remnant can represent a fragment. Remember,

there were hundreds of thousands taken to Babylon. Only 60,000 came back. That can discourage you, especially if you're a leader like Zarrabah Bell. And you know the hardest thing about staying in the ministry has been for me 15 years? Having to keep a good spirit even when people leave and it breaks your heart. Not if they leave to go on and do something great for God. I'm talking about people who just flat fall out and you go, this is how some of the campus pastors feel about the people who hadn't even come back to volunteer yet. after everything we did for you.

Really? You? I was praying for you for every ingrown toenail. You called me at 2 in the morning because you had heartburned and thought you had to go to the hospital and I would pray for you and you can't come back. Let me run into you in Ruby Tuesday. I will cuss you out. But so see, if I'm the devil, and I'm not, if I'm the devil, if I'm the enemy,

I'm going to try to get you so focused on who loves. left that you don't see what's left. There's still a remnant. Even if it's a fraction of what it once was, there's still a remnant. There is a remnant. Yeah, well, I don't have anything to be grateful for. There's a remnant. You just did it. Did you breathe in? Did you breathe out? Well, let everything that had breath, praise the Lord. Even if you lost your business, You still got breath. Even if you lost your boyfriend, you still got bread. It's not to say that that dude was rubble.

Maybe God was clearing him out so you could get ready for something better, better, better, better, better. Let me go on tour. I feel fired up. Holy Ghost, ripped into the noise. I'm not playing with y'all today. God said if you stay so focused on who didn't come back, who didn't support, who didn't like, who didn't endorse, who didn't click through, who didn't do it. This is what the Lord said to me in one season of ministry.

He said, if you keep focusing on who left and what's lost, you are not going to see who's lost and what's left. Because I was crying. Because some people left out on me that I thought, oh, we'll never leave. Be careful of those people. That's like Peter saying, I will never deny you, Lord. Jesus, like, before that rooster says cockadoodle,

he ain't even going to get to the do and you're going to say you don't know me. You're going to cut the rooster off mid-crowing disown me. But while I'm crying over who left, God has given me a mission as a pastor to reach people who are lost. That's the mission of Jesus to seek and save. what's lost. So the devil can't take you.

No, this is one thing he can't do. He can't take what God gave you. He can't. He can't. He can't. He can't. But if he can get you so depressed, so distracted, so disappointed, he wants to keep you crying,

to keep you from seeing what's coming. Stop crying. It's coming. Stop crying. It's coming. For everything that left your life, God has made a covenant with you. I am with you to this day. And let me finish the sentence. If God is for us, who can be against us? If God is with me, he is my. He is more. more than the world against me. I know you've been crying. It's all right. But God sent me with the prophetic word like Haggut. I see him reaching through the centuries to tell you, stop crying. It's coming. This is what's coming because you're crying over what's gone. Watch this. Watch this. What's coming is better than what's going. God has taken you from

glory to glory to glory to glory. The glory. He didn't bring me this. Alright, if you feel comfortable, touch your neighbor, say, stop crying. It's coming. Stop crying. It's coming. Put it in the chat. Stop crying. It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. It's coming. I don't say that by feeling. I say it by oil. David is in the field It's coming, it's coming It's coming, it's coming It's coming, it's coming

I don't say that by feeling I say it by faith It's common joy's coming Peace is coming Praise is coming Restoration is coming It's coming, it's coming In fact, lift up your eyes

The harvest is here Not for more much Right now I'm glad I finish this tour At Home I preach it to the right church today. Give him 10 seconds with prayer. Stop crying. It's coming. And if the enemy can keep you crying, he can keep you from seeing what's coming. Haggai said, I know what you're thinking. I'm thinking

it too. This is nothing compared to that. I saw pictures of Solomon's Temple. on Pinterest. It was expensive. Not enough. It was the same place Solomon's Temple was, but what made the same stuff? Because God is reforming it. He's reforming. He's reforming your life. He's shaping it like a potter in the clay. He's reforming it. That's what it is. It's his hands, not the devils. When we write songs, they always The worst they suck when we start them, the better they get when we finish them. But then we take it home, and we have the demo, which is like the rough version, and there's this thing called demoitis. And it's when you listen to the first version so much that you start thinking it's perfect, but it really needs a lot of work.

The devil has some of y'all in demoitis. You thought the first version was the only version of who you are, of what you do, of what your gifts are. But the Lord said, I can't make it better if you keep going back. Stop crying. I know it sounds insensitive, Pastor Steve. Jesus wept. Didn't you see that? Yeah, I'm the one who told you about that.

But that's not all he did. Look at John chapter 11, verse 38. It says, after Jesus cried, which is important. You know, trauma is. trauma is real. Seventy years in Babylon will make you cry. It'll make you forget to sing.

When you find out what your kids have been doing behind your back, it'll make you cry. When you and your husband don't even look at each other except when you're around people so you can fake it real good, it'll make you cry alone. God doesn't correct the sisters, but I'm glad he didn't stop there and you can't either. Because in verse 38, John,

1138 it says not Jesus cried but Jesus once more deeply moved came so he cried and then he came stop crying is coming I don't want the old temple to keep me from seeing Jesus seriously you know how it said in the verse in Haggai that from the day I brought you out of Egypt till now did you catch that Really small thing in verse 5. I didn't make a big deal out of it, but it is a big deal. Because they thought that Pharaoh had to let them go for them to leave Egypt. That wasn't their biggest problem. Their biggest problem was letting go of Moses.

Because see, Moses gave them the law. And they were so committed to that that when Jesus came, who was the true image of God, to show them what God is really like, not to break the law, but to fulfill it. When Jesus came, they could not recognize. better because they were stuck in before. So while we're fighting like, hey, Pharaoh, let me go, hey, addiction, let me go, hey temptation, let me go. God's like, the thing that you're holding on to is the former glory. I don't know who it is if it's three people is worth saying. You've got to let go of former glory to receive present help. Now, that means a lot of things.

It means that the same Jesus who cried at the gate came to the tomb. It didn't stop him from doing what he came to do because he didn't come just to cry or give him a hallmark car He didn't just bake him a roast so they could eat it three days later He came to show them who he was He came to reinvent their concept of God and to switch their template of truth that not only am I a healer I am resurrection. He came to prefigure what he would do he can So he cried. Everybody say he cried.

Come on, don't tap out on me. This is the best part of the sermon. I know y'all aren't going to listen to a sermon about the glory of the ladder house and skip the end of the sermon. This is the part I wanted to preach us to, because he cried, and you've been crying, and you have a Christ who cries, so that's fine. He will cry with you. But then you have a Christ who, after he stopped crying, he came to the tomb. So he's coming to the tomb. He's coming to the Park that's buried.

He's coming to the part that's broken. He's coming to the park that's dead. He's coming to the park that stinks. He's coming to the part that's rotten. He's coming to the part that's given up on. He cried. He came, but that's not the good part. The good part is verse 43 on the screen, quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly.

And when Jesus has said this, he called. So he cried. He came. And then he called. in a loud voice. And I hear that voice calling today through the halls of history, from the pages of Haggai to this very moment in the house of God. Lazarus, come forth.

He's speaking to your joy. He's speaking to your peace. He's speaking to your strategy. He's speaking to your spirit. Come for. So you cried a while. It's all right. I am convinced that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed.

So, did you catch that whole sermon? He cried. He came. He called. You got to call some things out today. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It ain't not going to come just automatically. You can cry over it.

as long as you want. But I believe that something deeper is calling from the inside. What the prophet told the people was, you got to do the work. You got to do the work. Is wishing for something that you don't have, keeping you from working with what you do have. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I needed this word that the Lord said, you can cry, but eventually you got to come. And you got to call those things that be not as though they are beneath your feelings. And the promise is, it's a covenant, not a commitment.

Commitments can be broken. Yeah, covenants cannot, especially when one of the parties is the one who cannot lie. So it's a lot of pain. You know, when they laid the foundation, Ezra showed us something. me, Ezra 310, when they got that temple started. And I think I'm going to pick this up next week for real, y'all, because y'all got one point. It's your fault. You were shouting and receiving and glorifying die. I didn't come to get through my points. I came to give you this word. Stop crying. It's coming. It's coming. Because the Bible says in Eser 3 that when the builders laid the

foundation of the second temple, the priests in their vestments with their trumpets, the Levites, the sons of Asaph with their symbols, took their places to praise the Lord. Like David told them to, with praise and Thanksgiving, they sang to the Lord. He is good. His love toward Israel enduced forever. Probably better melody than that, but that was the words they say. He is good, his love for Israel, endure it forever. and all the people. I want you all to do what the text says.

Stand up. Gave a great shout. A great shout of praise to the Lord. Because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. Now, that's where I'm going to pick up next week, because some of us are comparing our foundation to somebody else's finish line. And that's why we're discouraged.

And next week, if you will give me the opportunity, and God gives me the strength, I'm going to preach about how to shout about foundations. I'm going to teach you how to do a dance when the scale drops one pound. I'm going to teach you how to dance on the scale. And I'm going to teach you how to do it. Because when you lose a pound, you don't celebrate by eating a cookie. When you lose a pound, you buy some shoes. But if you're getting out of debt, you don't.

don't go buy shoes, you eat cookies. So I'm going to teach you about how to shout over little stuff next week and just redistribute the balance of it so you can keep your progress going. Oh, I love y'all. We're going to do it next week. But I got to show you this, because this is really what started me to teach this message. They were shouting about what God was doing. The new thing. Wow, we're going to have a temple. I've heard about this. One generation was saying, but it's not like the old one. And watch what the Bible says. in verse 12. But many of the older priests and the Levites and the family heads, the ones who should have been leading, the ones who should have been known that God is with us and we can't fail. He's going to do a new thing. It's who he is. Is what he does. He's reforming us.

But when they saw the foundation, they had seen the former temple. They had the old template. This is what it has to look like. This is what I thought marriage would be. This is the city I thought I would live in forever. This is how old I thought my mom would be when she died. This is how I thought it would be. When they saw the temple, it didn't match their template. And watch what happened.

And the sounds of celebration, the shouts of joy, while others were shouting, one generation is weeping over what it was. and one generation is shouting over what it will be when God gets done with it. What I want to know, is are you going to keep weeping or start working? Because you have forgotten who you are working with. The Lord Almighty is in you. It's by His spirit that you're building.

You are not building this by yourself, and you're not going to build it like before. He is able to do. exceeding abundantly above all you ask, above every template. He transcends that. The same body, you got shouts of joy and weeping. Which one will you listen to? Which one will you obey? He will begin a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it.

But you've got to be strong and do the work. Well, you're not working on your own. It is God that works in you. To will and to do according to his good pleasure. So maybe God brought you here to remind you what you're working with. That there is a remit that God has left everything in your life that he intends to use in this next season. I always read how I always read the Ecclesiastes verse, there is a season for everything. But I live in Charlotte.

I don't know what the weather is like where you live, but in Charlotte we have like two or three. different seasons in the same day a lot of times, especially right now. We don't know how to dress, do we? We'll be wake up in the morning shivering, six layers. You'd be sweating by 3 p.m., shivering again at night. That surprises people who come here from other parts of the country. They just can't believe how violent it is. They put up all their shorts, and the next thing you know is Wednesday. I need them again. I put them in the attic. I got bad knees. And it's confusing. So remember Solomon who built the first temple? This is something he said, I'll leave you with this and we'll pick it up next week.

Received this. He said, okay, I got it, I know how to, I know what to tell you. He said, verse 1, Ecclesiastes 3-1, there's a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. So new season, new temple, new template, that's what's happening in your life. That's why you're uncomfortable. God didn't leave you. didn't leave you. He's showing you himself in a different dimension. That's all it is. That's all it is.

But watch this. He said a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to tear down, a time to build, a time to weep, time to laugh, time to mourn, and a time to dance. And you know what? Sometimes, you are doing both in the same season. I thought those were two different seasons. Oh, I'm waiting for that dancing season. Sometimes you are going to have to dance while you drive the tears out of your eyes and keep dancing anyway. For the glory of this present house will be greater. God said, I will fill the house with glory. You keep looking for the gold.

But God said, I'm trying to fill it with glory. Not what you can see, what you can't see. I will fill this house with glory. It's coming. It's coming. You might not see it. You might not feel it. He said, I want you to keep working.

Even as you're weeping. Be strong Joshua. I care what the devil has been telling you. Your best days are not behind you. I rebuke that right now in the name of Jesus. The glory of the present house will be greater. Everybody who receives it, shout, shout like they did over the temple. Shout like, shout over the foundation.

And the glory of the present house, what God is doing. And right now, it's sound glory. Strength to strength. Lord, thank you for sending your word through today. We receive it. Thank you for laying this foundation. We receive it. Thank you for Jesus, who is the greater glory.

We receive your presence right now. Well, if you enjoyed today's podcast, there are a couple things I'd love for you to do. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. You can also help us reach others by investing today at L.E. Elevationchurch.org slash give. And thanks again for joining us on the Elevation Podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.