Home at Last

Text: Ephesians 2:19-22

Focus: The inclusive nature of the Church

Function: To help people remember that the Church is made up of many parts.

Form: Bible Study

Intro:

I am still moved by a Church sign I saw 20+ years ago outside of Turkey Run State Park in Southern Indiana. I have mentioned it before, but what I saw there has become sort of a “what not to do” image for me.

The Sign read:

Independent ______ Church
Pre-Millennial
Pre-Tribulational
Dispensational
King James Only

I am sure you get the last one; I don't care if you get the first three; they refer to subsets of doctrines within Christianity.

I don't know if they were saying that when they teach, this is the perspective, the lenses by which they interpret theology, or if they were saying that the only real truth, the only people who were going to be welcome were the people who agreed with every point of their own understanding.

That is much different that they way one translation puts those first few verses: “You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He's using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building”

Paul is telling us that when we are in the presence of God, we are Home at Last.

The Church, the temple of God is a place of welcome. Everyone who wants to come in gets a place here.

Once inside, God continues the work of transformation.

I have a pastor friend who is getting very political on his Facebook page.

He doesn't like the current administration and he is vocal about it, to the point where all of a sudden he has lost his ability to speak his mind in a kind way.

There are a lot of mean things said by the news pundits. But all of that kind of rhetoric is not the language of Christians. Especially Christian leaders.

I sent him a note asking him if someone with a different political viewpoint was welcome in his Church.

Paul is talking about the welcome to everyone in the Church. We know of its welcome because it is built on Jesus and the way He welcomed sinners, sinners like me.

But, drawing lines in the sand is human nature. We want to believe that our own beliefs are reasonable and defensible.

But the thing is, sometimes people reach opposite conclusions with as much integrity and sincerity as those who have different views.

Who is welcome in the Church?

What political party is welcome in the Church?

Which viewpoint of the end times, or prophecy, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the copy of scripture that we use, the style of music that we use and the list goes on is the correct one?

In all of these things, what is worth fighting over and what isn't?

Let us go back to our text, because it speaks about the inclusive nature of the Church.

Sometimes, when I am doing Bible study in a specific passage, I like to start with the conclusion first, and then follow the logical steps that gets us there.

So, in our passage, verse 21 states:

We (point to chest), the people, are the temple, the place where God dwells on earth.

People ask the question: Why the Church? Why is the Church still here on earth? We are the place in which God dwells.

Remember, the Church is not the building, it is the people.

When we leave this building, the Temple of God leaves this building and goes out among the world.

I can show you a picture of the US Capitol, the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon in Greece, the Coliseum in Rome and the Bear Creek Church of the Brethren and most likely, by sight, you would recognize the building.

In the same manner, we are this temple, that represents Jesus to this world.

And just as the US Capitol building represents something, so also, the temple is a symbolic design that represents a place where people can come and find rest and healing in God.

And in an important way, that is our point, our purpose.

Verse 19-20 speaks to the process whereby we get to this temple and it uses the metaphor of construction.

The temple is the Body of Christ, the people, the believers.

The foundation of a building supports a building.

It is the prophets and the apostles. It is God's Word, the prophets who in the Old Testament called out error and reminded the believers of their purpose. They also foretold the future, especially what it will mean when Jesus comes.

The apostles, along with the prophets, wrote the scripture down for us.

We preach those words here.

The foundation is the Word of God.

And a foundation starts with a cornerstone.

We have one outside, it has recorded the original date, and the date for the major addition.

But back in the day, when tape measures and laser devices with a reliable standard of measurement weren't available, the cornerstone also provided an accurate measure of what each dimension represented.

Because standardization was not as easily done, the cornerstone was the pattern that defined every other measurement.

The Cornerstone is Jesus. He is the standard by which we measure everything else.

This is a beautiful and symbolic description of the Church:

• Here, people are home at last
• It is made up of people, not bricks and mortar.
• It's principles are based on the Revelation of the Prophets and the Apostles, God's word.
• And at the center of everything is Jesus Christ.

So, let us go to verse 22.

This building is spiritually knit together.

We are spiritually knit together.

But that doesn't look like the case when I mention that sign, or when politics get involved. During the Civil war, both sides believed that they were working under some sort of divine mandate. The North believed that they were working to free the slaves, the South believed that they were working to preserve the individual autonomy of the states.

And they started killing each other over it.

But we are spiritually knit together.

That does not sound like warfare.

“Knit together” speaks of an interdependence upon each other.

Indeed it is. In 1 Corinthians 12, brother Paul speaks about this body and tells us that if one member cuts itself off from the body because the other part of the body has a different function, or a different perspective, it will die and the body will suffer.

We are spiritually knit together.

This is a place where we live and depend upon each other.

I love the first text we read together: Romans 10:9-13

In one sense, Brother Paul gives a formula for the prayer of faith, the prayer of salvation.

He says that If you believe and you confess you will be saved.

With the heart one believes, we spoke of it last week when we spoke of seeing with spiritual eyes. When a person believes, they are made right with God. And then, it overwhelms the heart, and they confess it with their mouths, and then they are saved.

But a formula is not what Paul was after. Because the very next verse he makes it more simple: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Everyone.

We assume that “calling on the name of the Lord” is some sort of prayer, or request, for God's help.

I am positive it does not refer to taking the name of the Lord in vain.

We assume that it is some sort of statement of faith.

And then it starts to get pretty tricky.

I have met some pretty big scoundrels who called on the name of the Lord, but there just didn't seem to be anything like the behavior of Jesus in their lives. They lived selfish existences and did not care for their fellow man.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 5 and 25 that there will be many who come to Him, some of them even preaching and healing in His name, and He will say that He never knew them. And it was because they did not love their neighbor as themselves.

So, just exactly where is this line between saved and lost?

Does it go all the way back to that Church in Indiana that had it so narrowly defined that only an handful of their neighbors would have believed exactly like them? And were they more concerned about proving their doctrine to be better than others than bringing people to Jesus?

And here am I, making a critical statement while our text is telling us that we are spiritually knit together.

A pastor friend of mine back in Pennsylvania had some people in his church who were gifted, and licensed counselors and marriage therapists.

So, based on their gifts, they began a counseling ministry that grew quickly.

They did a lot of “marriage” counseling for couples who were living together.

And some of them came to Jesus and wanted to join the church.

His elders took exception to them because they were living in sin.

It caused problems and eventually the pastor was forced to leave the Church.

This starts getting messy. Who is in and who is out?

Go back to that image of the Temple. That building with a symbolic design that calls people back to God.

You wonder if it is a building with bars over the windows and doors to keep people out, or a pavilion that is open, a place of beauty where people can come in and find rest and healing for their souls

At exactly the same time, I had another preacher friend who was the “head chaplain” of us three Police Chaplains.

Police work isn't easy. It is tough on marriages. The acting captain had a bad divorce. He was living with his girlfriend, and they needed some relationship counseling.

This other friend gave it without any judgment and had the support of his elders.

The Chief and his girlfriend were baptized. No one said a word of judgment.

Three years later, they were married. God did it in His time.

The one church wouldn't tolerate “sinners,” the other Church let God heal in His time.

How diverse is the Church?

How welcome are sinners?

How welcome are saints?

I love Charles Wesley, as he was organizing an entire denomination, the Methodists. There were, as always, conflicts and he kept things simple with three rules that he heard from an Old Moravian Preacher:

In the essentials, unity, in the non-essentials, diversity, and in all things: Love.

We see that listed in our passage, the building has a cornerstone, a template, a measuring device for what the essentials are: Jesus is the Essential, the cornerstone.

It has a foundation, some of the things that are non-essential, scriptures that have various meanings that can only be applied to specific situations, and we have records of different applications in the way the apostles had different emphasis in their ministries. The foundation is the scripture, The prophets and the Apostles, and all though they all agree on the cornerstone, Jesus, specific applications vary.

That does not mean the Bible has errors and inconsistencies. It is God's word and it is reliable.

As varied as the gifts, genders, upbringings, status and personalities, different men and women had different passions.

In those things, we must have a commitment to diversity.

God made us different in order to get more things done and to reach more people.

It proves that Jesus truly is central and it proves that we really can love each other.

That is the only way we can be spiritually knit together.

We must not forget that we are God's dwelling place in this world. We are the building that people who need God's healing have to come to.

We will keep to the essentials when we keep focused on Jesus.