Joined Together

SERMON: 2013-03-17--ac1398--joined-together SOURCE DURATION: 00:46:57.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Segment [0] marks the clear beginning of the sermon exposition. Segment [31] contains the final spoken thought regarding Christ's work before the material transitions into sustained acoustic music intervals which are outside the main discourse. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:40:55.840-00:42:19.420, 00:42:20.460-00:43:40.740, 00:43:59.960-00:44:05.540, 00:44:10.160-00:46:50.720 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I want to begin this morning by tracing with you the flow of Paul's reasoning here in Ephesians chapter 2 from verse 11 on to the end of the chapter, verse 22. If you look at the bulletin insert that you have this morning, it will be on the screen as well. Notice once again that he starts by emphasizing the gap that exists naturally between Jew and Gentile. Ephesians 2, 11 and 12, he says, "Remember that formerly you were Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision that done in the body by the hands of men. Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of promise without hope and without God in the world." Notice those phrases, excluded from citizenship, foreigners to the covenants of promise without hope and without God in the world. As we have been seeing in recent weeks, the big challenge for the early church was the question, how can Gentiles be included in the promises made to Abraham? The promise was to Abraham and his seed. And by special revelation given to the Apostle Paul, we understand in the New Testament that the seed is Christ. And so it is in Christ that Gentiles become fellow heirs and fellow participants in the kingdom of God. Only in Christ is the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile and every other people group in the world broken down. Verse 13 puts it this way, "Now in Christ, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Then in the rest of that passage from verse 14 to verse 18, he spells out what that looks like. He talks about the dividing wall that we looked at last week. "In Christ, the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile is broken down. In Christ, both those who are far away and those who are near become the children of God." And then he ends that passage in verse 18 with these words, "For through him, that is through Jesus, we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." And so the dividing wall between personalities and people and people groups, Jew and Gentile as the ultimate expression of that alienation is all broken down by the person of Jesus. At the cross of Jesus, it is level ground and the best of humanity and the worst of humanity all have to come to him in repentance and faith and that restores the relationship to God and restores the relationship with each other. Now you would think that having developed that whole theme in considerable detail here in Ephesians chapter 2, Paul would leave well enough alone and perhaps go on to another topic, but he doesn't. And the reason he doesn't is because he is not yet done. He is not yet convinced the Ephesians understand just how radical this work of Christ is in breaking down dividing walls between people and God not only, but also people among themselves. And so as he goes on in Ephesians chapter 2, he now in rapid succession gives us three word pictures in which he tries to describe what it is that happens. What it is that happens in our relationship with God, what it is that happens in our relationship with each other when by faith we have turned to Jesus. Let me quickly walk you through what those word pictures are. The first word picture is that we all become fellow citizens in the kingdom of God. Verse 19 he says, "Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens but fellow citizens with God's people." Remember they used to be foreigners, the Gentiles, they were aliens, they were outside of the covenant. He says that's no longer true of you, but now you are fellow citizens with God's people. In other words, the Gentiles have become citizens of the kingdom of God. And that's profound because God has a kingdom. And a kingdom means he has territory that is subject to his authority, he has people that are subject to his control, and he is the boss. And so Paul says to the Gentiles, "When you come to faith in Christ, you become citizens of the kingdom of God. You are every bit as legitimate as the physical offspring of Abraham to whom God originally made the covenants." In other words, you belong. He doesn't stop there though. Because then he goes on to say that not only do we become citizens of the kingdom of God, he says we become members of God's household. Notice how the sentence goes on. You're no longer foreigners and aliens, you're fellow citizens with God's people, and now he says you are members of God's household. In other words, God not only has a kingdom, he has a household, that is to say he's got a family. And in that family he is the father, and we all have a relationship with him as father, but more than that, we now are brothers and sisters sharing together in the family of God. He's still not done. He's still trying to make a point. So now he says not only do you become part of his kingdom, not only do you become part of his family, but he says now you become part, and he changes the analogy, and I'll show you why in a few moments, he changes the analogy and he says you become part of his temple. Verse 21, "In him that is in Christ the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple." So God, he says, has a kingdom, God has a family, but God also has a temple, and in that temple you are being built as a living stone. Peter talks about that, you might recall, in 1 Peter chapter 2 when he says, "You also like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." So here's the question for us this morning. Why does Paul belabor the point the way that he belabors it? Why does he in rapid succession give us these three different word pictures? Well, I believe it's because he is grasping about, if you will, trying to find a word picture, trying to find an analogy that demonstrates the intimacy of our relationship with God and our relationship with one another as we are joined in Christ. Because if you look carefully at each of these three different word pictures you will see that each of them describes in progressively more intimate terms both our relationship with God and our relationship with one another. Let me elaborate on that just a moment by way of illustration. When you're a citizen of a country, then you, or if you're citizens of a country, let me put it that way, then you share most commonly some measure of geographical space. Not always, but typically. You will typically speak the same language, though there are exceptions to that also, but you share the same government. You live under the same constitution and you have a certain commonality that binds you together. At the same time, you're very much separate individuals, you have different pockets of different ethnic origins, and your relationship with the government is typically a distant one. I'm often reminded, you know, when I was back at school in my college day at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, somebody would ask, "Where are you from?" and I would tell them I was from Prince Edward Island. That usually got greeted with a very blank stare, and I'd have to try to explain where that was and that it was in Canada, and then the next question would be, "Oh, I know somebody from Vancouver. Do you know them?" As if Vancouver and PEI are next door to each other. Have you ever noticed your nationality only counts when you're a tourist in another country and you run into somebody who's also Canadian? And then it's like you're a long-lost best friend, otherwise you have nothing to do with each other. That's the nature of living in a country. You've got things together in common, but it's pretty shaky. Move into a family, though, and it's a greater level of intimacy, isn't it? Because now, typically, you will share at least one, if not both, parents together. You live under the same roof, at least for a season. You share common values that are imparted to you by the household, and you share common privileges and responsibilities. You're brothers and sisters. You're blood relatives with each other, and that means a lot because we often talk about blood runs thicker than water. But you're still a separate individual, aren't you? And when you get of a certain age or you don't like it at home, you pack your bags and out you go, and you start your own family. So, yes, there is intimacy, but there are limits to the intimacy. There's an intimacy with your parents, but there are limits. You're still very much your own person. You're still free to go. All of that changes when you switch the analogy to being a living stone in a living temple, because what happens to you when you are a stone in the temple? You are cemented in place. You can't move, and you've got no say about who it is that you're rubbing shoulders with. You might not like the neighboring stone. Good luck trying to move, because you're stuck. And God isn't a distant government, isn't even just your close loving father. No, no. He now lives in the temple. He is literally physically present there. That's as close an intimacy as you can get. And that's why Paul grapples, if you will, with these different word pictures, so that he can finally nail it down, and he says, "Well, it's kind of like being part of the kingdom. It's kind of like being part of God's household, but what it really is, the intimacy that I'm talking about, the intimacy between God and the believer, the intimacy between fellow believers," he says, "You are a living stone blended together into a temple." And he says that is what God is about in the world. He not only brings us into relationship with himself, he not only puts us in the kingdom of God, where we share equally Jew and Gentile and all the blessings of God, he not only makes us a member of his household, where we share the blessings of being part of his family, but he says he makes us living stones in a living temple. So let's try to expand on that just a little bit. Verse 21, "In him that is in Christ, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord." When you read that or hear that, Rad, what Old Testament story does that immediately remind you of? Building the temple in the day. See, you're thinking way too deep. Building the temple in Solomon's day. You'll recall from the Old Testament that when David came into the kingdom, one of the first things once he had secured the land and built his own palace and so on was that he wanted to build the temple of God. And the reason for that is that throughout the history of the world, God's desire, and we have such a hard time grappling with this, God's desire is to live with his people in the most intimate of all possible relationships. That's why in the garden before sin, Adam and Eve are walking with God. And then when Israel enters into covenant with God at Mount Sinai, what's the first thing that God instructs them to do? Build a tabernacle. Why? The tabernacle is the dwelling place of God in the midst of his people. Then when they get into the land and the kingdom is established, what's the first thing David wants to do? He wants to build the temple. Now he's not allowed to do that because he's got so much blood on his hands. The job falls to his son Solomon. And so one of the first things that Solomon does is he spends 40 years building the temple of God because that becomes the visible sign of God's presence among his people. From here, he guides them. From here, he directs them. Here it is, they worship him. This is the link between heaven and earth. It is a temple where God is present. Now it is that picture that Paul is drawing on here when he says, "In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord." And one of the big differences, of course, between the Old Testament and the New Testament is that today God no longer dwells in buildings made of wood, stone, or stone. Instead, where does he dwell? He dwells in the heart of the individual believer, not only because your body has become the what? Temple of the Holy Spirit. But he also dwells in the church collectively because not only are we individually a temple of God, we are collectively the temple of God. Listen to how Paul puts it right into the 2 Corinthians 6 verse 16. He says, "We are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will live with them and walk among them and I will be their God and they will be my people." What that means is that every time you and I gather for corporate worship, guess what happens? God comes and lives among us. Because Jesus puts it this way, "Where two or three, let alone many more, are gathered together in my name, there am I with them." The genius of the church is that God now lives among and within his people. Let me say it again. When we gather like this and individually we try to be in tune with God through his Holy Spirit, we collectively come together. God's here. And as we'll see later on, Lord Billing, when God's here, fascinating things happen because the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, and the poor have good news to proclaim. It's an amazing thing that the genius of the church is not our brilliance, our clever thinking, or our wise theology. The genius of the church is the presence of Almighty God who through his Spirit can make the dead come to life, the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the poorest of the poor to know the goodness of our God. See, that is the kingdom of God. Now if you understand that, if you understand that the church is the temple of God, you'll understand why our Pentecostal brethren and sisters so often call their churches "temples" or "tabernacles." Calvary, "temple." Glad tidings, "tabernacle." Why? Because the Pentecostals in their experience have picked up on something the rest of us have often forgotten, and that is the fact that it's the presence of God among the gathered people of God where life happens and where miracles happen. You don't just logically argue your way into the kingdom. Lives are changed because God is here and when God is here, his glory is demonstrated. It's very important to have that awareness that going to church is holy business because it's a holy God who is building his temple. Now as we'll see in a few moments, this is a dynamic process. This doesn't all happen at once. In him, you are being built together into the temple of God. So what do you think has to happen individually and corporately for the temple of God to be built up? What do you think had to happen between Jew and Gentile for them to become a fitting habitation for God in the spirit? Well, I submit to you there are two things that need to happen for this temple of God to be built up. And the first is this. All stones must relate properly to the foundation. Listen again to verses 19 and 20. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. He says the foundation are the apostles and the prophets and the cornerstone is Jesus. What does he mean? Well, what he means is that the foundation and in the book of Revelation, it is the names of the apostles that are on the foundation of the holy city, which now is the fulfillment of God's promise to dwell among his people. The apostles are the foundation because God gave them and the prophets the revelation concerning the person of Jesus. As I said a moment ago, it is Jesus who is the chief cornerstone. That is to say, he is the one on whom this new body is built. The implications of that are incredibly profound because you see, you don't just become willy nilly a part of this holy temple that God is building. You don't become part of it because you're good looking or smart. You don't become part of it because you're born into a Christian family and they've dragged you off to Sunday school. You don't become part of it because you're rolled out of bed in a Sunday morning and you manage to make it to church. And you don't even become part of it just because you sit through a service or attend a new member's class or act like a Christian. You only become part of it by being joined to Jesus Christ by faith. He is the stone the builders rejected that in the wisdom of God has become the chief cornerstone. That is to say, God has to bring us to a place where we know our sin and misery, where we know there is no answer to human experiences apart from Christ and we need to give him our lives so that by faith we are joined to him. At this point, God becomes our father in the New Testament sense of the word. Jesus becomes our elder brother and the Holy Spirit enters our hearts to communicate to us all the benefits that we have in Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus, you will never have what it takes to break down dividing walls, to overcome all the obstacles of personality, ethnic origin, cultural background, or all the baggage that we carry with us going forward in life. And all the talk in the world among the nations of the world about unity cannot happen apart from a biblical relationship with Christ through whom we have died to the world and the world has died to us and we have been imparted a new resurrection life that enables us to say no to the devil, the world and the flesh increasingly, and yes to God. He is the foundation on whom the whole church is built. The Apostle Paul again puts it this way, he says, "No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ." Very important to understand because there is the constant temptation to think that somehow or another people can all get along with each other short of surrender to Jesus Christ. It cannot be done because no matter how nice you think you may be, there will be people you cannot stand and there will be people who cannot stand you. And the battle continues only getting worse as sin runs its course in life. Jesus is the foundation. So that's the first thing that needs to happen. You have to come to faith in Christ and you have to walk in newness of life, but there's a second thing that has to happen and that is the fact that every stone must relate properly to every other stone. Listen again to verse 21, "In him that is in Christ the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord." The key words there, keep that up for just a moment, are the words "joined together." Paul does an amazing thing here biblically because he uses a word that doesn't occur anywhere else in the Greek language. In fact, it only occurs one other time in the Bible and that is in Ephesians chapter 16, and he wrote that too, where he says, "From him that is from Christ," it's a very similar theme, "the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work." It is joined and held together, he says, "by every supporting ligament." And the reason the word doesn't occur anywhere else is because Paul makes it up. I guess when you're inspired you're entitled to do that. What he does is he takes three separate Greek words and he links them together. And I'll spare you the details of how he does that other than to say that the best translation of that particular phrase is "harmoniously joined together." A lot of Bibles have just joined together and that's alright, some translations have fitly framed together, that's better. But really the best translation is "harmoniously joined together." And the word picture that he is trying so hard to communicate here is that of a stone mason putting up a building. Now most of the time when we think of masons putting up buildings, we think of a building like this where you have brick, can you have blocks that look like this. That throws us completely in the wrong direction. Because you see, that only works because the bricks are all identical or very similar size and shape and whatever else. And that is the opposite direction to where Paul is going in this because Jews and Gentiles are not a pile of similar bricks thrown on a pile out of which you can make a building. So the analogy here is actually that of a mason building a building out of field stone. And so it looks like that and I keep this up for just a bit while I talk about that. Building a building out of field stone is much more complicated and a lot harder work as you can imagine because there are many steps to the process. First of all the mason would have to go out and find the stones and in so doing he'll find some stones that he wants, some stones that he doesn't want. He'll pick them for variety and for the different shapes and then he's got to lug them home. Today of course a lot of this stuff is artificially created but they didn't do that back then. He actually had to go and find it. So then he begins to plan what this wall is going to look like and he wants as much variety as he can possibly can. Doesn't want all the red stones in one corner and all the blue stones in the other corner. No, no he wants them spaced around. So he'll handle this one and then he'll handle that one and then he'll say oh this is a good one for this location and he will use his mortar and he'll cement that into place. And now the process repeats itself. So he tries to find another stone that sort of matches with the next one not because it's identical because there's a certain fit. And then he continues to build the wall in this fashion recognizing that not all stones are automatically going to fit together. A lot of them are going to need a little bit of work. Like a hammer and a chisel to pound them into shape. Because the skill of the mason is demonstrated in how he can reduce the gap between the stones and how he can present an overall kaleidoscopic view of what that wall looks like. And the better he succeeds at that the better a mason that you're dealing with. And so take a look at that picture. Whoever put that one together not only knew what he was doing but he put a lot of effort into fitting all of those stones. I challenge you to find fireplaces that have been built out of field stone that don't have mortar joints that are this wide because it is time consuming and hard work. Isn't that true? What a picture. Paul is painting of the church. Because when God builds the church the first thing he does is he goes out and he finds the people that he wants to be part of that church. Have you ever noticed he picked some really weird ones? I mean, you wouldn't have picked them to sit beside. You wouldn't want them to be your friends. And you want to keep your distance. And you feel much more comfortable around people of your same socioeconomic standing and people who think like you and who talk like you and who speak your language and who, you know, you have whatever bonds it is in the natural that you have in common. And God says, no, that's not what it's about. I'm not building a Dutch church over here and an English church over here and a German church over there. The tragedy, you know, of Christendom is that we keep doing precisely what God doesn't want done. No, instead God goes around and he chooses the most unusual people because he knows what lives in their hearts. I don't know if you've ever pondered this, but why are you here? I mean, not like why are you here this morning, it's just nice to have you here this morning. But why are you a Christian? Why are you part of the family of God? Not because you were so brave and bold and full of faith. No, God called you and he chose you and he gave you the gift of faith. And don't you ever forget it because there's a lot of people around you who have been brought up in similar situations and circumstances as you are and they do not have the gift of faith. It is a gift that God has given you. So he picks you and now he says, "I've got a plan and a purpose in mind." And most of us are just, you know, happy if we can get to heaven one day and lead our lives without too much trouble and too much difficulty. But that's far short of what God's after. God's after building a kingdom. He's after building a family. More than that, horrors. He's after building a temple. And so he takes you and me and he looks at us and says, "Okay, that's a stone that I can work with." And he connects us to the foundation, doesn't he? And then he goes through his other pile of saints that he's dug up from somewhere. And then he says, "All right, I think this one could fit together with that one." So then he puts a blob of mortar between them. And then he repeats that process, always keeping in mind the variegated pattern that he's trying to produce. And then he comes to you and to me and he says, "You know, that stone could fit there, but my land." There's a lot of grinding that has to happen for that to fit. And he gets out his hammer and his chisel and he knocks the stuffing out of us. And he breaks down our biases and our prejudices and our arrogance and our rebellion. And he keeps at us until we start fitting into his plan and into his purpose. And so Paul says, "You are being built together as a holy temple in the Lord." As I said, this is a dynamic process. God is constantly at work building this temple, building a people of power, as the little song goes, and a people of praise. He's constantly at work connecting us to the foundation and then connecting us to one another in a way that the temple grows for the glory of God. Now, I ask you, what happens when that temple gets built up? What happened in the Old Testament when Solomon's temple was completed? God came and he showed up. Listen to these verses from 2 Chronicles. "When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven, consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could not end enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it." When the temple takes its shape, when people are in right relationship with God and in right relationship with each other, God shows up. And when God shows up, His glory is beyond comprehension. You might recall in the New Testament, when spiritual gifts were being exercised in the church and God's people were prophesying, Paul says, "When pagans enter and they hear you speaking, the secrets of their hearts, by the authority and by the word of God, they'll fall flat on their faces and they will declare, 'God is among you.'" That's how people's lives change. Not because just intellectually, they're argued into another position. People's lives change when they encounter and they meet the living God. Just for the record, the same thing happened in the Old Testament. The Bible says, "Concerning the tabernacle, the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle." Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled upon it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. God is serious about building up a living temple. He is serious about our relationships with Him and He is serious about our relationships one with another. That's costly business because as we saw last week, we often have a history. We have a history with each other. We have a history with God. What the Lord wants us to do is take it all to the cross so that in the cross receiving God's forgiveness, we can extend that forgiveness to others in all of those places where we feel that we have been hurt or disrespected or misrepresented or where people have taken and stolen from us what we thought was their own. To wind up this little mini-series on the church, one more time, a video on forgiveness. [Piano music] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:40:55.840; remove through 00:46:57.000] [Piano [CUT] music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [Piano music] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:46:57.000; resume after this marked segment]