Embracing Individuality in the Spiritual Temple

Let's remember we are considering our place and our positions as members of the Church of Christ. We are looking at ourselves as part of this Great Wall, this great edifice, this great building that's going up to make a temple, a habitation for God to dwell in, as God dwelt in the old temple in the shakina glory in the holiest of all. [00:22:08]

There is a personal and a particular selection. Every stone is picked out and placed in position by itself. There wasn't such a thing as mass production when you built in that way. You can do that sort of thing with bricks, one's as good as another, but not with this kind of edifice that the Apostle is thinking of. [00:23:45]

Thank God in a world in which the individual is so increasingly becoming lost that he remains the whole Center in these matters. I like to think of it like this, to change my illustration, there is only one way of entering the kingdom of God, and that's through a Turn Style. It isn't a wide open gate; it's a Turn Style. [00:24:50]

All the stones in this building are not identical. Go and have a look as soon as you can at some magnificent Stone building here in London and watch for this point. The stones are not equal in size, nor in shape, nor in anything else. They're all different, and yet they're all harmoniously fitted together. [00:26:46]

The glory of Christianity is that it touches all types and kinds and conditions of men, and this element of the variety and the variation and the lack of sameness is so tremendously interesting. The stones in the wall not only are not meant to be the same, it wouldn't be a correct wall if they were the same. [00:28:35]

We are not all meant to be the same as Christians. Our individual characteristics are still to be here. Some of us are born vehement; well, we are meant to be vehement. Others are quiet and phlegmatic; let them continue as such. There is nothing more appalling to me than a phlegmatic person trying to appear as if he were vehement. [00:30:28]

No, no, we're not all meant to preach, but you know there's a teaching today which almost seems to say that everybody, the moment he's converted, he has to give his testimony and then preach. We're not all meant to preach. We're not all meant to go to the foreign Mission field. [00:31:44]

Let us then, I say, get rid of this idea we must all be the same, and let's discover what God would do with us and have us be. You know, the history of the church bears eloquent testimony to this fact that sometimes some unknown obscure Christian, whom the church hadn't heard very much about, but who had been spending his or her time in prayer and in intercession. [00:32:27]

Some of us perhaps as Christians are called just to be kind to people, to be friendly and sympathetic, to just sit and listen to them. You know, you can help people tremendously by just listening to them. They unburden their hearts, but there are some of us who are so active and so busy and are doing so much talking we never give them a chance to speak. [00:33:32]

The next thing obviously is this question of the preparation and the shaping. Now, I've told you that this Builder sees that at this point he requires a certain shape and size of stone, and he looks at his mess of stones, and he casts his eye over them, and he picks one out. [00:38:01]

Have you ever watched the Mason doing his work? Many times as a boy, I did this, and it always fascinated me. He took the stone, and then he had various types of hammer, and he just knocked bits off. He trimmed it, he shaped it, he fashioned it, he chipped bits off it. [00:39:09]

It's done by preaching and teaching. That's the whole business of preaching and teaching. It's the fashionist to prepare us. We've all got these odd angles and corners, and as we are by Nature, we don't fit in. They've got to be chiseled off, angularities, awkwardness is we don't fit in. [00:42:35]