1. "We long for a time before the enslaving, before the divorce, before the tragic, irreversible mistake. We long for love to be restored. Our world has partial answers at best. The Bible has God's answer."

2. "To be cut off from our Maker, to have the way stopped up to the sovereign of the universe, to have only foreboding as we look forward to meeting our Judge—this is a terrible life, and yet it has been our life and must be our life unless the Son has given Himself in substitutionary sacrifice."

3. "We were strangers from each other, ultimately, because we were strangers to God. But different races can only separate us when we see them as more important than the same blood that unites us. And any way our culture tells us that is true, it's lying to us."

4. "It is the message, not the messenger, that determines the apostolicity of the church."

5. "When a church abandons Christ and His gospel, it abandons its only reason for existence and its only hope for the future. They may fade into endowed community centers, but their life as a Christian church is over."

6. "A church built on Christ will never fail. Our members may be scattered, but never forsaken; discouraged by man, but never disowned by God; even killed by human hands, but never snatched out of the hand of our heavenly Father."

7. "In being called to love God in Christ, you are being called to love all of those made in God's image, everyone, and especially everyone who's been born again by God's Spirit. You have been designed and enabled to love and serve other Christians."

8. "Though we are saved by ourselves as individuals, we are not saved to be by ourselves. We are saved to serve and love God and to serve and love others, and to let others who know and love God know and love us."

9. "God's people are in God's place. His people become His place. For us He makes special provision. He specially manifests Himself with and for and among us."

10. "America is an experiment. The church is a certainty."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ephesians 2:17, to whom did Christ preach peace, and how are these two groups described?

2. In Ephesians 2:18, what three persons of the Trinity are mentioned, and what role does each play in our access to the Father?

3. What two contrasting identities does Paul describe in verse 19—what believers once were versus what they now are?

4. According to Ephesians 2:20, what is the foundation of the structure Paul describes, and who is identified as the cornerstone?

5. In Ephesians 2:21, what does Paul say the "whole structure" is growing into, and what word describes how the parts are connected?

6. What is the ultimate purpose of this building project according to Ephesians 2:22, and by whose power is it accomplished?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that both "those who were far off" (Gentiles) and "those who were near" (Jews) receive the same message of peace through the same Christ? What does this reveal about God's plan of salvation?

2. The sermon emphasized that peace with God has both "subjective" and "objective" aspects. How do these two dimensions of peace differ, and why is the objective aspect described as "even more significant"?

3. Paul moves from describing believers as "fellow citizens" to "members of the household of God" in verse 19. Why does the family metaphor represent a deeper level of relationship than citizenship, and how does this connect to being children of Abraham by faith?

4. What does it mean that Christ is the "cornerstone" of the church (v. 20), and why would a church that abandons Christ and His gospel lose its reason for existence?

5. How does the image of believers being "built together into a dwelling place for God" (v. 22) represent the culmination of God's plan from Genesis to Revelation? What changed about where God dwells after Christ's work?

Application Questions

1. The sermon noted that prayer should become "as natural and desirable as the wind under the wings of a bird." What specific obstacles currently hinder your experience of intimacy with God in prayer, and what one step could you take this week to cultivate greater enjoyment of access to the Father?

2. Paul emphasizes that believers are "fitly framed together" and that God smooths our rough spots to help us fit with others. In what specific relationship or situation in your church community do you sense God may be shaping you to better love and serve others? How might you yield to His work rather than resist it?

3. The sermon challenged listeners that "different races can only separate us when we see them as more important than the same blood that unites us." What practical action could you take to build deeper fellowship with a brother or sister in your church who comes from a different background than you?

4. If being a member of Christ's body "should be your chief aim and goal in life," how does this priority compare with how you actually spend your time, energy, and emotional investment? What would need to change in your weekly schedule to reflect this priority more clearly?

5. The sermon stated that "America is an experiment; the church is a certainty." How does confidence in God's certain plan for the church affect how you respond when you feel discouraged about the state of Christianity in your culture or community?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Hebrews 4:14-16 — This passage, quoted in the sermon, expands on the confidence believers have in approaching God through Christ our great high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses.

2. Genesis 3:22-24 — This account of Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden and God's presence provides the background for understanding humanity's alienation from God that Christ reverses.

3. Ezekiel 37:24-28 — God's promise to dwell among His people forever and make them His sanctuary connects to Paul's teaching that the church is becoming God's dwelling place.

4. Revelation 21:1-7 — This vision of the new heaven and new earth, where God's dwelling place is with man, shows the ultimate fulfillment of what Paul describes beginning in the church.

5. 1 Peter 2:4-10 — Peter uses similar imagery of believers as living stones being built into a spiritual house, reinforcing the corporate nature of God's temple and the identity of God's people.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Universal Human Longing for Reconciliation and Restoration

II. Access to God Through Christ (Ephesians 2:17-18)

III. Adoption by God as Fellow Citizens and Family Members (Ephesians 2:19)

IV. Becoming a Dwelling Place for God (Ephesians 2:20-22)

V. The Church as God's Eternal Plan and Certain Future

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Detailed Sermon Outline

How can hate turn to love?

Enmity and hostility to friendship and fellowship?

How can alienation turn to intimacy? What alchemy can make enemies forgive and the estranged reunite?

These themes fill our lives. From the star-crossed lovers, from enemy clans, Romeo and Juliet, to the Disney comedy, Parent Trap, to the most serious books on reparations, we long to know how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

We long for a time before the enslaving, before the divorce, before the tragic, irreversible mistake. We long for love to be restored. Our world has partial answers at best.

The Bible has God's answer. And we come to it in our passage today.

The peak of Ephesians' great majestic view of God's plans. Ephesians chapter 2, beginning in verse 17. Listen as I read you the passage. It can be found on page 977 in the Bibles provided. Ephesians chapter 2, beginning at verse 17.

And He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

Notice in our passage three related images that Paul uses to convey this restoration of love between us and God. In verses 17 and 18, access to God.

Then in verse 19, adoption by God. And in verses 20 to 22, we see that we become a dwelling place for God. And this will be our outline for the time. Verses 17 and 18, access to God. Verse 19, adoption by God.

In verses 20 to 22, we see that we become a dwelling place for God. That'll be our outline. So I pray as we study this passage, you'll see something of the richness that's been granted to us through Christ, the richness of fellowship with God restored, and that you will be sure of your place. In this sweet fellowship, in this new house that God is building for Himself.

First, we read of our access to God. There in chapter 2, verses 17 and 18. Look there, it's 17.

Both the far off and the near we read. The far off, those of Gentile, that is non-Jewish, birth, and the near, those who are ethnically of Israel, the Jewish believers. We see here in verse 18 that both have heard the message of peace through Christ. Christ is the He there in verse 17. Picked up from the He Himself emphasized up in verse 14, which you see there from verse 13, that's Christ.

So in verse 17, this is about Christ. Paul tells us that He came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who were near. We certainly have three years recorded in the Gospels of Jesus preaching peace to those who were near to the Jews. We don't have record of Jesus preaching to the Gentiles. There was the Syrophoenician woman and a couple of other examples.

So what's Paul talking about here? Is there a separate ministry of Jesus that we don't hear about recorded in the Gospels? No, friends, I think here he's talking about the preaching that's been done as this message of peace has been carried out by Christ's Spirit through His apostles. This is where the message has gone not just to the Jews, but to the Gentiles as well. This is the way God has had this great message of peace proclaimed.

And this peace that's proclaimed is a comprehensive peace. We thought about it in the verses before, and we'll see it again afterwards, that this includes a horizontal peace between Jewish believers and non-Jewish believers. So this is a peace in the church between all Christians, whatever their background. And we thought about that in the last couple of studies from Ephesians. We even saw it graphically demonstrated before our eyes by the grace of God and in Lois's sweet response to the heckler.

Friends, I wonder how you've seen this lived out in our congregation in these divided days.

But this horizontal peace is rooted in another even deeper and more significant peace, our peace with God. And this peace has two different aspects to it: the subjective and the objective. Subjectively what I mean there is, of course, the experience of peace. When we're in Christ, where before our troubled conscience would accuse us with reason, Now we know a peace with God. We know that there is love from God that includes a forgiveness because of Christ and His work that we've accepted by faith.

And yet even more significant is the peace with God objectively. That is that the hostilities between us and God have come to an end. Buried in the work of Christ in shedding his blood for us. But friends, even that objective peace can be considered in two aspects. The peace that characterizes our approach to God, no longer enmity and resentment and rebellion and yes, even hatred.

That's gone now. It's replaced fundamentally and already and increasingly in experience and totally one day with love for God in all His ways. We don't even think of accusing Him with wrong. And the peace also that characterizes God's approach to us. No longer one of right wrath and certain punishment, but one of forgiveness and mercy and love.

Friends, this is the peace that we have been called to and that we have been given with God in Christ. It's a comprehensive peace, and it can be yours today. If you're here as someone who does not know that peace. Find one of us at the doors afterwards and talk to us. Or if you came with a Christian friend or family member, talk to your mom or your dad, talk to your brother or your sister, talk to your friend you came with to let them explain to you more of what that peace is and how you could have that peace today.

We keep reading in verse 18, For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So here we see all three persons of the Trinity mentioned. We come to the Father. He's the King we would approach. We come through the Son.

He is our mediator. His sacrifice opens the door. And we come by the Spirit. He is our guide and sanctifier who's given us this gift of repentant faith, who's given us this new birth and who's preserved us. Let's think a little bit more about the work of the Spirit and of the Son and then of the Father.

First, how wonderful that the one Spirit is the one who brings all Christians to Christ. It doesn't matter who we are. There are no different kind of doors into the church in that sense. There's no distinctions whereby God deals with one person one way and another another. Paul is clear that for all the various means God uses, He always God always works immediately by His own Spirit to give life to the souls dead in sins and transgressions.

The Spirit stirs us up to seek diligently the Father. Remember we said earlier up in chapter two that none of us naturally seeks God. It's the work of the Spirit to awaken us spiritually. And from that very first moment of our new life in Christ, there is an intimacy and a growing intimacy with God. And it begins with the experience, whatever specific means He may have used to bring about this truth of Christ and impress it upon us, He begins with an experience of God's own Spirit dealing with us directly and personally.

Yes, human instruments differ. Human instruments are tools that the Spirit uses, but these human tools, whether they're parents or friends, whether preachers or evangelists. These tools have saved our lives, spiritually speaking, only in the way that the scalpel may have physically. The real power lies in the hand of the surgeon that used it. So friends, if the sermon here by me or Bobby or someone else has led you to Christ, we're delighted at that.

But don't mistake the implement used for the one who brings life. That's the Holy Spirit of God. Whatever tool he uses to bring you this message of peace with God in Christ and give you the gift of faith.

There's a nearness to God that is real in fact, and it's a growing experience through the work of the Spirit in the Christian's life. Brothers and sisters, I wonder if you've found this, that in times of prayer or praise, you wonder why you don't seek God more.

Why you don't long for this fellowship that you sometimes experience and catch a whiff of that made you wish that your fellowship with Him would never end.

As prayer never seems sweet to you as you consider who God is and how you've come to Him, how you have access with Him. Friend, pray that God, by His Holy Spirit, would teach you how to pray and what to pray and when to pray. Pray that God would help you enjoy prayer, that it would become as natural and desirable to you as the wind under the wings of a bird. Or as the thought of your bed after a long day. Pray that God would develop in your heart an experience of reliance on Him that feels right and good and natural as things should be.

How wonderful that God the Son should love us as He has, that He would yield up Himself to be the means of satisfying God's wrath and so expressing God's love for we who were His enemies.

You know, it's not that we found God. No. What does Paul say here in verse 18? He came. He came to us.

And for what? To give himself, as he taught, as a ransom for many. How wonderful that he would yield himself to be the substitute for sinners, the deliverer of the destitute, the raiser of the dead. We just sang a few minutes ago, For my life he bled and died. Justice has been satisfied.

That's what Paul's talking about here in verse 18 with that, through Him. Our access to the Father is through Christ. It's through His substitutionary sacrifice on the cross. So if you want to know how you can be forgiven for your sins, that's how. It's to turn and pray to God, to trust in what He has done for all sinners in Christ.

Who will turn and trust in Him. Again, talk to me afterwards. Talk to somebody else if you want to explore this more. We do Bible studies through Mark's Gospel where we help you look at the ministry of Christ. We'll happily do that with you if you want to understand more of what that means in your own life.

We think of the glorious encouragements over in Hebrews 4 about the way the Lord has made access for us to Himself through Christ.

Hebrews 4, beginning at verse 14: Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who is in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. So the Spirit's work among us, the work the Son has done, and then how important is access to the Father? Again, friend, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, understand that none of us naturally have this access.

The Bible doesn't teach that we are born naturally disposed to the good. The Bible does not teach that. The Bible does not even teach that we're born neutral. No, the Bible teaches that we are all born wanting to do what we want to do, regardless of what God wants. Now sometimes those go along the same direction and it may look like, oh, that we want to do what God wants, but then our sins show actually God just happened to agree with us for a while.

Naturally, we want to do what we want to do, regardless of what God wants, and that is what the Bible calls sin. And that is natural to our fallen human hearts. This is why the Bible describes us as being spiritual rebels. We are born alienated from God, estranged from Him, cut off, and even under His judgment. Friends, to be cut off from our Maker to have the way stopped up to the sovereign of the universe, to have only foreboding as we look forward to meeting our Judge.

This is a terrible life, and yet it has been our life and must be our life unless the Son has given Himself in substitutionary sacrifice, unless the Spirit has replaced our stony, unbelieving hearts with living hearts filled with faith in Him. Only so can we have access to the Father, acceptance with Him, a welcomness to be in His presence. For expectations of dread to turn to delight, and for our hopes to ripen into joy. And what parent here wants their children to feel anything other than confidence at the thought of the reception they would get from you when they come home. We want them to know that we love them, that we will welcome them, that they can be certain of that.

That's the kind of access that we have now to the Father because of the sacrifice of the Son and the regenerating work of the Spirit. Access to the Father is ours now and forever.

Of course, one thing this means for us as Christians is that we can come to Him in prayer. I had a wonderful time earlier this week, or this past week in my quiet time, meditating on the Lord's Prayer. And it struck me for the first time how the Lord's Prayer is really the kind of second Adam walking us back from the sin of the first Adam. Do you ever think about that? Maybe take the Lord's Prayer and superimpose it on Genesis 3.

The evil that captured our hearts, we pray, to be delivered from. Our sins, we ask to be forgiven for. Instead of taking forbidden fruit, we ask for promised bread.

Instead of doing our own will, we pray for God's will.

Instead of leading earth in rebellion against heaven, we pray that God's will will be done on earth as thoroughly as it is in heaven. Instead of being made in His image and yet taking His name in vain by living in sin, Christ leads us to pray that God's name would be hallowed. Even in the ways laid out in this prayer.

In the very way we come to address Him, no longer as our alienated Maker represented by the angel with the sword flaming in his hands to prevent our entry, now we address Him as our Father in heaven. Brothers and sisters, this is the one that we have access to today. Now and forever. Praise the Lord.

But then let's go on even further here to note number two, our adoption by God in verse 19. Ephesians 2:19, we see we are no longer strangers and aliens, but we are fellow citizens and family members. You can see the transition in our passage there at the beginning of verse 19.

So then, this is the point where Paul rejoices in the fact that what we had been, we are no longer. So then, because of all that I've said about what Christ has done and how by His Spirit His gospel has now been preached and peace has been brought to Jewish believers and Gentile believers, and because through this one Christ both Jewish and Gentile believers have access by the one Spirit to the one Father, so then You see, Paul is winding up, the emphasis is increasing, the celebratory announcement is about to be made. Verse 19, you, are no longer strangers and aliens, no longer what we once were, no longer strangers, Paul says. The sojourner has settled, the foreigners have joined, like Rahab, to Israel. The guests have become family.

We were strangers from each other, ultimately, because we were strangers to God. But friends, different races can only separate us when we see them as more important than the same blood that unites us. And any way our culture tells us that is true, it's lying to us. It's speaking only what it knows outside of Christ. And that delusion never deceive any true child of God here today.

Of course, Paul writes, no longer, because once we were. But now, Paul says, you are fellow citizens with the saints, God's people. Makes me think of Philippians 3, where Paul writes to the Christians, For many of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly, their glory is their shame, with mind set on earthly things.

But our citizenship is in heaven. Fellow citizens together with all of God's people, that's us. And friends, what privileges are ours now and what responsibilities along with them? We are citizens of an everlasting kingdom. In fact, we will judge the world.

And more than that, even angels. That's the kingdom that has already begun. Christ has all authority and He has given His authority to us to go and make disciples of all nations. And we do this with the assurance that when the final trumpet in Revelation 11 sounds, the loud voices in heaven will say, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.

And what one has called the mad self-confidence of this world comes to nothing. And when that happens then the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ will stand and will stand forever. But there's more. Look at that next phrase: and members of the household of God. What Paul is doing here is he's tracing our privileges back to the highest point, nearest the headwaters of them all, because we are fellow citizens and fellow members.

We are part of the same nation because we are part of the same family of faith, the family born through faith in God and His promises. So we're citizens of the same kingdom because we're members of the same family. We don't think of that so much today. 21st century Americans. We think our family is one thing and our nation another.

Ah, but put yourself back in the mindset of a 1st century Jew. To be of the nation of Israel means to be of the children of Abraham. The family of Abraham is the root of the nation of Israel. So to be a member of the one is to be implicated in being a member of the other. And that brings us back through our faith in the promise of this same God.

So because we are sons of Abraham, having the same faith, because of that we are citizens of the same nation, the same people and family. Because we are sons of Abraham, we are citizens of Israel. Friends, if all of this is true, and it is, if we have only one Savior who preached only one message, if there is only one way and one family of God, if there is only one foundation, as Paul goes on to say, and one source of our duty, if our church has one builder and one purpose, if all of this is true, what can divide us?

Apart from our own blindness to these truths or sinful elevating of our own personal preferences over what God has called us to be together.

And if there are privileges and responsibilities for being a part of this kingdom, this same kingdom, for us all. How much more are their privileges and responsibilities for being a part of this family, the same family, the family of God.

Our good works reflect our Father's goodness. Us loving our enemies reflects God's loving His enemies. We are now members of the household, the family. Of God. I pray that we will live like it together in ways that show the world around us what this new family is like.

Brothers and sisters, we're going to think more about this tonight, Lord willing. And I've asked one of our members who sent me a very encouraging testimony yesterday morning to be willing to share it tonight. That and more goodness to come. I just want you to know as your pastor in our very imperfect church, I thank God for how much this is already the case. For how many evidences I see that if I just take the same parties and imagine them as unregenerate people, I may well not be seeing how much God has worked this, even visibly the case.

And I pray it will be so among us even more as we care for and love people who we don't have anything in common with so much physically, but everything in common spiritually. But we have to go on and see that we not only have access to the Father and have been adopted by Him into His family, but that we, number three, are to become a dwelling place for God. We see this in verses 20 to 22. In verse 20 we see what we are built on. We see the structure's strength.

In verse 21, we see what we're built with. We see the structure's unity. And we see what that we're built up. We observe the structure's growth. And then the climax there, really, in verse 22, we see what we're built for, the structure's purpose.

The strength there in verse 20, the unity and the growth in verse 21, and the purpose in verse 22. Let's look through these last few verses here. We see something of the strength of what God is building. Verse 20, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, so the church is built on the revelation of God as God has committed the ministry of reconciliation to Paul the Apostle. So our teaching ministry here and in every other faithful church is an extension of that apostolic ministry through the Scriptures being read and taught.

So may a church properly be called an apostolic church because it claims to have physical dissent, succession from pastor to following pastor.

No. There is no church in the world, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, that can convincingly make that claim. Furthermore, the claim misses the point. The truth has never been assured by physical succession. It's a succession of the truth of the apostolic teaching that we care about.

So any church that teaches that apostolic truth, even if it seems to spring up out of the ground by hearing and reading the truth and believing it by the work of the Spirit, that is an apostolic church. It is the message, not the messenger, that determines the apostolicity of the church. You see what Paul is doing here in this list. He's digging down from the apostles back through the prophets. They come second.

So some people thought, well, are these New Testament prophets? They could be. And Paul certainly later seems to talk about that. But I think here he's talking about the apostles and then the prophets and he's digging down to the foundation, the cornerstone ultimately, which is Jesus Christ standing underneath it all. We read here in verse 20, the bedrock, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

So, friend, when a cornerstone is laid, the rest of the structure is envisioned and implied. Its depth determines the building's height, its strength, the building's weight, its orientation, the building's shape and direction. As they practiced construction, without a cornerstone, no structure would stand. So the church will stand only so long as it is Christ's church, only so long as it is built on Him. When a church abandons Christ and His gospel, it abandons its only reason for existence.

And its only hope for the future. They may fade into endowed community centers, but their life as a Christian church is over. It's done because Christ is the only true foundation of His church. As Paul goes on to say in verse 21, Christ is the one in whom we are built and in whom we grow into being a holy temple. On the other hand, a church built on Christ will never fail.

Our members may be scattered, but never forsaken; discouraged by man, but never disowned by God; even killed by human hands, but never snatched out of the hand of our heavenly Father.

Once we are his, we are his forever.

So Paul could write in verse 21 of Christ being the one in whom the whole structure was built. You see in verse 21, in whom the whole structure being joined together, this brings us to what the church is built with. So we thought about what the church is built on, what the church is built with. We see something of the structure's unity here. Built, joined together, the King James, the authorized version, elegantly renders this as fitly framed, fitly framed.

The way we are built in Christ, we are built to not be alone. In being called to love God in Christ, you are being called to love all of those made in God's image, everyone, and especially everyone who's been born again by God's Spirit. You have been designed and enabled to love and serve other Christians. The shape this takes is especially in your local church. And that's why membership in a church and the commitment and devotedness that it represents is not something unique to this church, it's not something new to churches in general, it is of the very nature of what God represents as our situation in Christ.

Though we are saved by ourselves as individuals, we are not saved to be by ourselves. We are saved to serve and love God and to serve and love others, and to let others who know and love God know and love us. That's why Paul can speak of being joined together in Christ by the Spirit. It's to this end that God shapes and fashions us in His disciplining love. So brothers and sisters, yield to His good work in your life as He smooths your rough spots and rounds some of your angles to make you fit in better with others.

Yield to His work. I wonder how that's been happening to you, maybe even in these last few weeks. Are there ways you've sensed conviction or felt something growing in a good way? You've felt the Spirit's work in leading you in this or stopping you or stilling you here. Don't resist that work.

Lean into it so you can be fitly framed together with the other brothers and sisters he's called you to love and serve him with. Just to pull the camera out for a moment, you see what this means. We're at a whole new stage in God's plan for the world, his being done with Israel and abolishing the law, to use Paul's language from up in verse 15, that's a sign to us that God's plan for the final restoration of all things has begun. So surely as the resurrection of Christ was the first fruits of the general resurrection of the dead, it was the resurrection of the last day, beginning. So the ending of the separation between Jews and Gentiles is a sign of the beginning of the real New Age in Christ as the temple of God, His dwelling place, is being built up through the church, which brings us to our being built up, the structure's growth, which we also see here in verse 21.

You see that in the last phrase of verse 21, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. This is a continuing process.

Now We are, and yet we will become even more fully. The structure grows into a holy temple to the Lord. It does not appear at once overnight. The journey does not end as soon as it begins. We are imperfect.

We are not yet complete. But we are developing and changing this direction into the form and shape of a holy temple. You realize, don't you, that in the most important sense we have not come back into Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

In these last two weeks. Rather, the Capitol Hill Baptist Church, which was meeting in Anacostia Park, has come back into this building. We are God's church, His assembly, His dwelling place. He is building us even now as we listen to His Word. We both are His temple even now and will be even more fully and perfectly one day.

And what we can rejoice in is that this is fundamentally God's work. The Father who loved and the Son who gave Himself and the Spirit poured out, who enlivens and enlightens, He gives this growth. We grow together around the very truths taught in this passage. Let there be no uncertainty or hesitancy or discussion or noise of The debate about it for the foundation is man is dead in his sins and transgressions, helpless and hopeless, raised by the grace of God, saved by the blood of Christ, and regenerated and renewed and joined to Christ by the Holy Spirit, and made a stone in the holy temple in the Lord. Paul's clearest climax, the summit really of his letter to the Ephesians is found in verse 22.

In Him you are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. The thought of us, people like you and me, being a dwelling place for God is right next door to unthinkable. How could we sinful vessels of clay be a dwelling place for the Holy Creator, the righteous Judge of all, the eternal, omnipotent God? I mean, for just one thing, God is a Spirit. So if He's a Spirit, and furthermore, if He is omnipresent, if He is everywhere, what does it mean for Him to have a place?

Location where he dwells. Well, friends, that's one of many ways that God has communicated truth to us about himself through anthropomorphisms. Anthropos, man, morphism, form. Speaking about himself as if he is one that has human characteristics in order to illustrate and help us understand. So his dwelling place is not a place that he is limited to.

But it's a place with which He allows Himself to be specially identified, for which He has a special concern. You see what this means. We are people that He is specially concerned with. He has called us His people. And in our passage we see that His people become His place.

For us He makes special provision. He specially manifests Himself with and for and among us. He gives us special increase. He gives us special hope. He gives us special confidence.

This fits with the trajectory in God's Word from God placing man in the garden in Genesis 2 to Revelation 22 where all of God's people will live with Him forever in His immediate, visible, personal presence. God's people are in God's place. You remember how throughout the Scriptures Holiness is associated with God.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they were cast out of the garden and out of God's presence. That was the very core of the curse pronounced on them because of their sin.

You remember when Moses approached the burning bush, which was not consumed, where God first called him, as Moses approached, God told him to take off his sandals. Why? Because the place on which you're standing is holy ground.

In the days of the tabernacle and the temple, elaborate rules mark off the place as the place of God's people, of God's presence, where it especially was, the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies. At the end of the book of Ezekiel, the book's culmination is a vision of the restored temple and a restored city, and the climax of it all is the last words of the book of Ezekiel. It's the name of the heavenly city, the Lord is there.

The Lord Jesus Christ was uniquely called the Holy One of God. And then in Revelation 21 verse 2, in the vision that God gives John of the culmination of all of history, he writes, and I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. That image of the bride should make you think of the church. A little further on in Ephesians 5 and following Paul will use the picture of the church as the holy bride of Christ. Now here in Ephesians 2 it is clear that God is making us that place.

We become God's new house, a holy temple, a dwelling place for God. There were foreshadowings of this in the days of Israel, the tabernacle in the wilderness and the temple in Jerusalem. Especially the Son of God coming to us as Immanuel, God with us, and His promising His Spirit and giving His Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And so now as Christians, we are already indwelt by God's own Spirit, and God's Spirit's presence in us is the down payment on the fullness that we are to know at the return of Christ and the culmination of God's plan, as we His people don't just join God in being in His place, but in fact become the place where God dwells.

One detail in all this we must not miss is the one doing this building, this joining together, this giving of the growth. Who is it? It's God. He is the great architect and planner. He is the one who gives the growth.

This is not finally the result of human effort or carrying out plans of human wisdom. This is the work of God according to the will of God done by the power of God among the people of God by the Spirit of God. We begin to see just how it is that Paul will be able to say down in Ephesians 3:10, Through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and the authorities. In the heavenly places. Did you realize that all this was going on in the church?

It's amazing, isn't it? God's people have access to God. We've been adopted by God. In fact, we're becoming His very dwelling place, His new house. Praise the Lord!

What an amazing present experience! An even more promised future.

We should conclude. Some feel today that the church is receding. One writer has mentioned that the Christian era has been but an interlude between two phases of paganism.

And I can understand why it looks like that.

But if you pull the camera back even further, we see that's not the vision that we have here. The church has been God's great plan for glorifying Himself all along. And the church will only finally fail if God does, and God will never fail.

America is an experiment. The church is a certainty. Have these verses this morning helped you to see something of the great things that God is doing in the church? You realize that all this isn't just about budgets and buildings and whatever other particulars have caught your attention in the life of the local church. You see the great things that God is doing in your own life right now.

Do you see how they're connected to His plan? Friend, it should be your chief aim and goal in life to be a member of the body of Christ, to be in right relationship with God and with others. This is what life is about. And Christ is the only way to no such reconciliation with God and with others. It's only in Christ that God's new society, His new house, comes about.

Only in Him that we are united with each other in love. Only in Him that we are united to God. If we keep reading from where I left off a few moments ago in Revelation 21, we hear, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people. And God Himself will be with them as their God.

This vision God gave later to John is the vision that He had clearly given to Paul, and it's what He's teaching us today. Don't you want to be a part of God's people, part of the new house that He's building?

Let's pray together.

Lord God, we pray that yout would teach us how we can follow youw, have access to youo. Teach us, Lord, what it means that yout adopt us in Christ.

Lord, fold each one here into youo family. Pour out yout Spirit here.

Among us, we pray, for Jesus' sake. Amen. Amen.