Nearly every day for the last few months I have been taking little tours of our church campus, because nearly every day there is some exciting new element being built in our current expansion project. And while I have gone on what I call my “walkabouts” I have found myself thinking about some of the grand churches of the world, places like St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, St. Peter’s in Rome, and Haggia Sophia in Istanbul, and the First Presbyterian Church of Socorro, New Mexico! But I’ve mostly been thinking about a site on a hill in Jerusalem where King Solomon built the first temple of the Jewish nation, a magnificent structure that would be destroyed, then rebuilt, and destroyed again, over the course of a millennium. Today modern Jews pray at the Western Wall, all that is left of the Temple Mount from the time of Solomon. And someone like me wonders if there ever will be another Temple built on that site.

The campus renovation and expansion project of The Village Church is just one tiny little chapter in the grand history of the building of buildings in the Judeo/Christian tradition. But it is a big chapter in your history and my history. It is a moment in history for us that is being woven into the history of God’s people as we find ourselves building together for the purpose of building God’s kingdom. And so today and for the next several Sundays we are going to take some time together to think again about what this project is all about. Why have we gone to the trouble of making a big mess of our church home, of moving all our activities around into places they normally would not be held, of spending and planning to spend so much of our financial resources? What inspired us to undertake this project and what will we have when we are finished? These are questions that we have been asking and answering for almost a decade of planning and dreaming and working together, questions and answers that each one of us needs to have in our hearts in these days, in this time in our history.

To ask and answer these questions we need to go back much further than just a decade. We need to go back about 3000 years into the history of our faith, where we find a young nation of Hebrew people who have escaped slavery in Egypt, who have survived many decades of wandering in the desert, who have triumphed in a long series of battles and conquests, who have settled in a land called Canaan, and who have begun to learn to live as a people committed to the God who has been with them all along the way. The young Israel has had its first king in the person of Saul, and their second king, whom they would later come to regard as their greatest king, King David, has managed to unite the twelve tribes of the sons of Jacob and to establish a capital in Jerusalem. King David is now living in a magnificent home built of cedar. But something is not right in his heart. Some 300 years ago, Moses had led the people out of Egypt, and Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, had spoken to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and God had given Moses the law inscribed on tablets of stone. These tablets were carried in a special box called the Ark of the Covenant, and the Ark was kept in a magnificent tent. Now, under David’s rule, the Tablets and the Ark were still kept in a tent, while David himself lived in a house. And so David decided that it was time to build a house for God. But God, speaking through the prophet Nathan, has another plan for David. And that is where we pick up the story that is recorded for us in the seventh chapter of the book of 2nd Samuel. Let us hear the word of God.

But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever. In accordance with all these words and with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.

God had two messages for David. One of them was that it was not within God’s plan to allow David to build a temple for him. God’s plan was that David’s son, King Solomon, would build the temple. And that is as it happened. As far as building a temple was concerned, God’s plan for David was that David would pave the way and make everything ready for Solomon. Under David’s rule the site for the temple was chosen, materials were gathered, and even craftsmen were enlisted. David would begin something that someone else would complete. Solomon would indeed build the temple and it would serve as a house of worship and prayer for the Israelite nation for centuries to come. God was not against the building of a temple, but as far as David was concerned, God had something different in mind.

God’s other message for David was that instead of David building a house for God, God was going to build a house for David! David had been upset by the fact that he himself lived in a fine home while God still “lived” in an old tent. Of course David knew that God did not literally live in the tabernacle, but it still bothered him that the place of worship was not up to the standard which he himself enjoyed. But God was interested in something else. He had other plans as far as David was concerned. In an obvious play on words, God is planning to build a house for David, a dynasty, a kingdom, a people, a posterity, a nation, that will never end. In a unique sense, God lives not in a physical dwelling place but in a people, a people chosen and equipped to live out the reality and power and presence of God in their midst. Remember these other words of scripture, that when the time came for Mary to be delivered of her child, she and Joseph went to Bethlehem, the City of David, because Joseph was “of the house and lineage of David.” David’s eternal house, God’s eternal dwelling place, is with the people of God, people like you and me, who have been brought into God’s house through our faith in Jesus, the one who was born in Bethlehem. We are the house that God promised to build for David, which was not for David’s sake, of course, but for God’s sake.

God’s house that he was building through the kingship of David is a house that went through its own major expansion and renovation project when Jesus came on the scene and taught that God’s intention and plan was to bring all of his people into the household. The Apostle Paul understood that more than any other early follower of Jesus and so Paul went into the world of the Gentiles to welcome them into the household of God. God has been building his dwelling place in the hearts and fellowship of believers ever since. And, we believers, just like Solomon, have been building houses for God ever since, houses of worship, of nurture, of prayer, of fellowship, of education, of service, of witness to the mighty acts of a loving God whose intention and will is to restore his entire creation.

That is the historic context within which you and I as The Village Church are living. Fifty-three years ago as of May 6, this congregation was formally chartered as The Village Community Presbyterian Church of Rancho Santa Fe. Ever since, we have been serving and growing as a fellowship of Jesus Christ, welcoming anyone and everyone who wants to be somehow involved in the life of learning and ministry that is the Christian journey. In 1959 we dedicated our first sanctuary. In subsequent decades we built education buildings and expanded our sanctuary twice. In 1996 we dedicated this Fellowship Center. And in the beginning years of this decade we again were faced with the need to expand our campus facilities in order to meet new and growing demands for space within which to conduct some of the vital ministries of our congregation. And so we find ourselves in yet another season of building.

Today is the kickoff Sunday for our second capital stewardship campaign to support the short and long term ministries of our church through the most extensive campus development project we have undertaken since our inception as a church. And while there are many challenges associated with such a project—how to design the best buildings possible, how to survive the ups and downs of operating a church while also building, and how to finance the whole thing, the challenges are well worth the rewards that we will enjoy. We will finally have classrooms that we can dedicate to our children’s Christian education ministries. We will have increased space for our youth ministries. We will have more space for adult educational ministries. We will have a world-class sanctuary suitable for all types and styles of worship that is also large enough to accommodate all the church family at one time in worship. We will have adequate parking on site. We will ease the pressure on this building so that it can be used more for its intended purposes of fellowship and education. We will have adequate office space for our dedicated staff. And we will have a church home that is on a par with the homes in which we ourselves live.

But why do we want and need to have all of these things? Because we are building God’s house here, and I don’t mean the physical buildings. It has always pleased God to speak his message into the world through the lives of real people who are living in a relationship with him while they live out their lives in the world. To put that in other words, we say that God dwells with us and God dwells with the rest of the world through us. God makes his house here among us. You and I have heard an old word used very often as a noun, the word “tabernacle.” When we think of a tabernacle we think of a church building. But in the Old Testament, the word is also a verb. God “tabernacles” with his people: he comes to dwell with them, to make his house among them. In his supreme act of coming to dwell with us, God came in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and it is that Jesus whom you and I follow. In our following him, we are serving as the house of God, the witness of God, the example of God in the world. That is the real building that we are building here, a building of people in whose lives God is working every day to redeem this old world that he loves so much.

In the coming few weeks I want to share with you my vision—which I believe is a vision from God—of how this campus renovation and expansion project will allow us to become more faithful disciples of Jesus and more effective agents of his work in the world. We will talk about the growth of our own faith and the sharing of that faith with others. We will talk about the life of this church as a great family that we enjoy and into which we invite anyone who also wants to be a part. And we will talk about the future, a future in which this household of God will continue to shape and to serve the broader community for decades to come. We need to speak of these things so that we will remember why we need to continue this project and bring it to completion through our financial gifts. We can take great pride in the fact that we have already raised half the money needed for this project. But we still have half way to go. We have $8 million, and we need $8 million more. Today we are giving you a brochure and a prayer guide for this campaign. This week we will mail a pledge card to every household of the church. We ask that you carefully study the guide, that you pray for the success of this campaign, and that you plan to come here on Sunday, May 17, with your pledge in hand. I need each and every one of you to do three things: pray fervently, continue your own ministry through service to the church and your service to Christ out in the world, and give generously.

But why should you do all that? Why should you care about this project and why should you continue to give? To answer that, let’s go back to King David. David wanted to insure the well-being of his family and of his people, and so he planned for the building of a house of God so that the people he loved would always know and serve the God who had saved them from Egyptian slavery and given them their own homeland. David knew he was part of something that was about more than just himself and his own narrow interests. David understood as a mature follower of the Lord that he shared in the responsibility to build upon the work of past generations and to build for the sake of future generations. David is an example to us all.

Our campaign theme is “Building Together.” We are building a strong and vibrant family of faith here, for the sake of our own faith, and for the sake of those who have yet to come to faith. We are building together, because God’s house is not about one person, but about all of us coming together to work together for a larger purpose and a higher calling. I hope that you will join me in committing your prayer, your participation, and your financial gifts, to this necessary and vital step forward. It will serve you, your family, and many others, both now, and into a long future.

Amen.