It is estimated that it took a workforce of 12,800 to build the Khufu’s pyramid in Egypt over a period of 23 years. This was calculated by working out the potential energy of the pyramid and dividing it by the number of days spent constructing it. It is all guesswork because nobody actually knows how they did it, but after all that effort and all that time the king buried there, although mummified, is still dead.
Jesus was given a borrowed tomb, a natural cave in a rock face, it took nothing to build it, and he is alive. Many worldly religions honour their dead because they are dead and there is no hope of seeing them again, but with the Christian that is now reversed because Jesus is eternally alive.
They reckon it took 14 men per cubic metre of stone a day, to cut and lift it above the quarry bottom and move it into place. By current day percentages if it were built in England it would take five hundred thousand men to do it. The average size of a congregation is 75 and that is equivalent to 6,666 churches – I wonder why its 6,666?
All those churches trying to build a grave; a monument, or a grave monument to celebrate death when Jesus is alive. I wonder if there is a message here. You go into many churches and there is a lot of activity but I wonder if they are building life or death. It makes me view HICC circumspectly, and ask what we are doing.
Early this morning I awoke to find my bedside radio clock flashing on and off – there had obviously been a power cut while I slept. I didn’t know it, but power had gone. Silently it had failed. That is possible in church life. The Holy Spirit can depart, as he did in Ezekiel, and we don’t notice it as we sleep in contentment.
It is a serious question to ask, “What are we building?” or perhaps another one “are we building anything of value, or just making sand castles, soon to be washed away?” The wise man built on rock, the foolish man on sand; good foundations are essential. Jesus is a low, laid and lasting foundation who can stand the rigours of the ages with its raging storms of adversity.
He built the universe that is still working properly and he holds it all together by His word. He could if he wished screw up the world and spit it into the eyeball of a fly, make an ocean from a dew drop on a rose leaf and make a forest from a cocktail stick – that’s my Jesus. The greatest builder there is.
Too many by their lifestyle build death, but Christ builds life, life eternal, life overflowing and life super-charged. The magnificent decaying pyramids of a past civilisation speak of a dynasty that was built for death, let us all build for life. We don’t need any wondrous edifice to do that, but let Jesus Christ dwell within our hearts and establish his dynasty there. Every life so energised is a brick in the temple of the living God.
