"Living Grace" Ephesians 2:20-22 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, the city of Ephesus was known for its temples.

We've been in the book of Ephesus now, our Ephesians, for a while, so it's very easy to forget the particular people it was written to because it's very applicable to us.

But in order to understand how Paul wraps up Ephesians chapter 2, you do need to remember what Ephesus was like.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

This was a real book written to real people with real problems in a real city.

And the problems that faced Christians in Ephesus are very important for us to understand for us to apply this book to our own life today.

Because I think by the end of our morning you will see that the cultural peculiarities of Ephesus are not that dissimilar from our own Western world.

Ephesus was a notable city, it was remarkable, it was a powerful and influential city, it was not some tiny backwater village, and it was known and notable for its religiosity.

The Romans had adopted many of the Greek gods.

The Greek pantheon had kind of been just drafted into the Roman culture and the Roman world, and many of their temples were in Ephesus.

Ephesus was easily the most religious city in the Roman Empire.

There were temples everywhere.

First of all, every house in the city of Ephesus basically functioned as its own temple.

People had their own gods, their own idols.

There was no shortage of gods in the Roman pantheon.

There were the twelve kind of chief gods in the Roman world and then a score of others.

And these different gods and goddesses were idolized in a literal sense in the houses, put on the mantelplaces, put above fireplaces, even, put uh on tables, put in the yards.

There were little shrines devoted to them.

If you've uh spent time in Mexico or Central America, you've seen the same kind of phenomenon there where people will put their uh little statues of saints or whatnot at different locations in their house and in their yard, and other people can offer them gifts and put flowers there or pray there.

That's what the houses in Ephesus were like.

There were idols and icons and statues everywhere to the Roman gods and goddesses.

But that wasn't the mainstay of the Ephesian religion.

The mainstay was their massive temples, and there were temples everywhere.

One for Roma, one for Julius were two big ones.

One on the west side was for uh Domitian, who had a platform.

His temple was the biggest one on the west side of Ephesus.

It had a platform a hundred yards by fifty yards, you know, so that's even bigger than a football field.

And we would have a difficult time uh fitting, even down there at the bottom of one of our stadiums, was this massive platform for Domitian.

A huge statue on top of it.

People would come and they would buy meat sacrificed to him.

They would sell their wares there.

It was a center of worship in that world.

And the middle of Ephesus was the city hall.

The city hall also functioned as a temple, where the government was headquartered, it dubbed as a temple, and this was the temple to the goddess Hestia.

She was one of the twelve Olympian deities, and in Greek folklore, she was pursued by both Apollo and Poseidon for marriage.

She didn't want to risk offending either of them, Poseidon, the god of war on water, and Apollo, the god of war.

She didn't want to offend either of those two, which you could see why that would be a problem.

And so she, rather than saying no to one or the other, she vowed to live a life of singleness.

Zeus rewarded her for being fastidious by appointing her as the goddess of sacrifices, which also meant she was the goddess of home and of hearth.

She was the god of uh goddess of fire when it was in the fireplace in your house.

She was the goddess of housewives, so to speak, the goddess of family, of kitchen, of everything domestic, and of sacrifices.

So all sacrifices went kind of through her if they were to be received.

She was a very powerful and influential goddess.

And so in Ephesus, they made their city hall also devoted to her.

The influence of her in the Roman life had grown to where by the time the book of Ephesians was written, she was not only the goddess of home and hearth, but she was also the goddess of civic life and of government.

All things domestic, and in the Roman mind, government fell into that category.

She was extremely powerful and influential, and Ephesus was built around her.

And those were just some of the major temples.

There was others.

There was a massive temple for Zeus.

There was one for the mother goddess.

There was one of the larger temples, wasn't even built by the Greeks or the Romans, but by the Egyptians.

If you think of the geography of the Mediterranean Sea, there's Egypt on the south side and directly across the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt is the Aegean Sea.

And that's where Ephesus was on the east shore of that.

And so the Egyptians had gone over there and built a temple for their own water gods and goddesses to so bracket the Mediterranean basin with their own worship.

The Nile flowing in on one side, the Aegean Sea on the other, and that much of that temple, the Egyptian one, has been excavated already.

There's a massive structure in Ephesus that was the temple for Artemis, who the Romans called Diana, and this was easily the largest temple in Ephesus.

In fact, it was probably the largest Greek temple in the entire world, and it was in Ephesus.

It was literally one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The Greeks called her Artemis.

The Romans had shifted her name to Diana, and it was the focal point of religion in Ephesus.

It was 150 yards long, 75 yards wide, so it probably wouldn't fit even at the base of FedEx Stadium where the Redskins play.

It wouldn't even fit there.

So you're dealing with a temple that is bigger than that kind of structure.

It had 130 columns around it.

The columns were 60 feet tall.

We're dealing with a massive, massive temple.

This was the pride of Ephesus, this temple.

It was the focus of their religious, of their religiosity.

Now, the way the Roman Empire worked is that a Caesar, when he died, one of the emperors when he died, he would be deified.

He would become, like almost Promotion Sunday, he would become a god at his death.

And the Romans would race to recognize their deceased leaders as gods and deify them.

You know, in our own American culture, when a president leaves office, he does a you know a fundraising campaign to kind of build a presidential library where his books and papers are on display, and there might even be some kind of contest over which community gets to have it and who raises the most money for it kind of thing, and it gets settled and the library gets opened.

Well, the Roman world, and we have nothing on them.

You know, when one of their leaders, one of their emperors, died, it was a race to deify that person.

And it wasn't one library in one city, it was lots of temples in lots of places.

The race wasn't to see who could be first, the race was to see who could be, build the biggest and the most ornate, and the most elaborate, and the most expensive temple for their deceased leaders.

And Ephesus excelled in those races.

They wanted to be known as the city where the Roman gods and the Roman deities were worshipped.

As I mentioned, the center of this was the temple for Artemis.

It's just a ferociously religious city that everything revolved around it.

The Ephesians took pride in their religiosity, pride in having the most elaborate and ornate temples.

I mean, if you think in Western terms, if New York is known as a center of finance and uh Los Angeles, a center of Hollywood and movie production, and Las Vegas is known for gambling, and Washington, D.C.

is known for our football team or uh governments, government politics, that's what we're known for.

The Ephesian world, Ephesus, was known for its religious worship, its worship of the Roman gods.

That's what the city stood for.

I tell you that to make sure you appreciate the extreme tension the Christians had there.

Because the Christians didn't conform to that system.

They didn't recognize the former emperors as gods.

The streets there were named after the gods and goddesses, the temples were on the streets.

I mean, Christians were living in that world where the things were named after gods and goddesses that they didn't recognize.

Even taxation had a religious component to it.

When you paid taxes, it was the they received it as tribute towards the eventual deification of their leadership.

Taxation had a religious component to it.

Christians were forced to navigate that world.

Food was purchased at temples where it was slaughtered and offered to idols and then sold on the streets.

That's where you got your food.

I mean, we're dealing with a very difficult environment to be a believer in when everything is so religious and it's not your religion.

Christians were ostracized then.

They felt like they were on the outside looking in.

And imagine the temptation they might feel to conform.

What I mean by that, imagine the temptation they might feel to say, well, the Romans have all these massive temples for their gods.

Why can't the Christians get their collective act together and build a massive temple for Jesus?

The Romans have their idols everywhere.

Why shouldn't we make little idols for Jesus or the twelve apostles or for Mary and put them out?

That way we can kind of compete, so to say, so to speak, with the Romans.

Because everybody thinks Artemis is all this and all that.

But she's nothing, the Christians would say.

Let the world know that by building a huge church, a huge temple for Jesus.

That was the issue the Christians were going through there.

And the temptation to give in to that, I'm sure, would be extreme.

About six years ago or so, I was in Bhutan, and in the center of, well, on the outside of the main city in Bhutan, Timpu, they were building while I was there the world's largest Buddha.

It was this massive construction.

It was a huge gold Buddha.

It was going to be the largest Buddhist temple and the largest idol of Buddha in the world.

And there's all kinds of like different you know, this is the largest sitting Buddha, this is the largest standing Buddha, this is the largest happy Buddha, this is gonna be the largest Buddha.

Massive.

And I've showed you pictures of this before at a Sunday evening service a while ago.

I know a Buddhist would say it's not a real God, not like you mean God, but still it's a powerful image to see people literally laboring on building that which they should worship.

This temple was huge.

It overshadowed the entire city.

The city is in kind of a crescent uh mountainside there.

The city's built up a mountainside, as is everything in Bhutan, and the Buddha was being constructed on a mountainside kind of opposite the city.

So you could see it from everywhere.

It literally cast a shadow over everything you did in life.

The church, when it was meeting there, met in a nondescript little home.

Uh no signs outside.

It was a gated home, had a wall around the outside, like many of the houses do there.

And people would have to show up staggered so the people on the street wouldn't see a large number of people arriving at one time to a house.

They kind of staggered and trickled in over time to avoid detection.

The windows all had sheets over them so you couldn't see into the church.

It wasn't that large of a house, but you could, I mean, they managed to fit like 75, 85 people in there, which was incredible to see everybody packed in there.

There was no Bhutanese word for fire code, that's for sure.

And then when the singing started, they put hung up quilts over the sheets and quilts around the door to kind of muffle the sound and keep the sound into the in the house there, because they didn't want to be discovered.

And then after church, everybody leaves again, staggered, oftentimes leaving out the door to be greeted by this massive statue of Buddha looking down over the city.

It's a question that's gonna go through their minds, I'm sure, a Bhutanese believer, as it would in Ephesus.

Whose temple is bigger?

Is the Buddhist temple bigger than the Christian temple?

Is the temple to Diana or Artemis bigger than the Christian temple?

I want to try to answer that question this morning by looking at these last three verses in Ephesians 2.

I'm gonna do so by giving you an outline.

We're gonna look at the church's design.

The church's design from the end of Ephesians 2 here.

The church's design.

We're gonna begin.

Let me read these three verses to you, that this church is built in the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself, verse 2 says, being the cornerstone.

In whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

When it talks about the structure being built together, it is talking about the church.

Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 2 parallel each other in so many different ways.

Ephesians 1 takes you from the Father to the Son to the Spirit, how the Father predestined, the Son redeemed, the Spirit applies faith.

Then it takes you to the last part of Ephesians 1 about the wisdom of the ages being wrapped up, all things given under the authority of Jesus Christ, who reigns over all things through his body, the church.

That's Ephesians 1, 22 and 23.

Everything is over, Jesus is over everything, and it's put under his feet, which is the church, is what he's reigning over all things through.

Now Ephesians 2 goes through that same list again.

And I hope it strikes you how parallel these two chapters are.

Ephesians 2 also works through the Father, Son, Spirit, only now it's from a bit of a biographical sense.

Now you're dead in your sins and trespasses.

The Father is going to come save you because he's rich in mercy.

He's going to save you by sending you a redeemer, Jesus Christ, who will save you and raise you up, verse 6 says.

He does this by giving you faith through the Holy Spirit, verse 8 says, so nobody can boast.

It's the whole Trinitarian progression.

And then again, the chapter ends, verses 11 through 22, with all things being wrapped up, the dividing wall being broken down, all things being united and being reigned over by Jesus through the church.

So both chapter 1 and chapter 2 end with this little description of how God is reigning over the world through Jesus Christ, He reigns over all things through His church.

Which is such a powerful, just marvel at that for a second.

It's such a powerful description of Christians who feel belittled and beleaguered, Christians who feel on the outside that all society has its own system and its own function, all society is working in this certain way, and you're not invited to the party, you're not part of that whole worldview and that whole world system.

You're not, you're on the outside looking in and you feel disengaged, disconnected, isolated.

And Paul tells you, hey, I know you're feeling like you're left out, but do you understand that all things in the world are under your feet?

If you feel like you're on the outside of the world system, that's because you're actually standing on top of it.

You're looking down on it.

Yeah, you're not part of it in that sense.

The Lord is reigning over it through the church.

He gave all things to the church as Jesus reigns over it all.

Just a remarkable word picture here for Christians that feel isolated in society.

That Jesus says, listen, you're reigning over the world.

The world doesn't recognize it, of course, because they can only see horizontally.

But you can see vertically, and you see that above you is the Lord, and beneath you are the systems of the world that He is establishing His kingdom on top of.

So let's look at that that He's establishing on top of them by looking at the church.

We'll begin with looking at the Church's building plan.

The church's building plan.

And that's this is going to teach us as we look at it in verse 20 that the church is new, that this is something new God is building by looking at kind of unrolling the blueprints.

You know, you know, architects roll show up with the whole architectural plan and a booklet and scrolls, and they lay all those massive scrolls out, all the work plans all over the floor.

That's what we're looking at here.

God's design for the church, the church's building plan.

It begins in verse 20.

That is, the foundation of it is the apostles and the prophets.

Now you know the foundation is what is laid first in the building program.

The foundation goes first.

When you're going to build a big building, you put the foundation down first.

In our own neighborhood, uh, we've recently watched them build a new set of row houses together.

They started by demoing all the trees that were there and just destroying everything.

And then the next step was they cleared out these little areas and they laid the foundations.

They haven't even put the road down yet.

You can't even tell where the road is going to be.

You can't tell where the front of the house and the back of the house is going to be.

You don't know which direction the house is really going until you look at them laying the foundations.

It's the very first thing they're putting in.

They're going to even place the roads based off of where they place the foundations.

It's remarkable to watch.

That's the image Paul has in mind here.

The foundation goes down first.

Everything else is built.

On top of that, you don't start with the second story.

You don't even start with the first story.

You don't even start with the basement.

You start with the foundation.

And you build everything.

You better know what shape the building is going to be before you lay the foundation.

Imagine saying, I'm going to build a circular house.

And so you build a circular foundation, and you're like, ah, maybe a square.

That's going to be pretty silly.

Your house will either collapse or you'll have these big concrete things hanging out the corners.

You decide what you want first and then you lay the foundation for it.

And that's what Paul is describing with the church.

That God is building something new, and the foundation of what he is building is the apostles and the prophets.

Now, the apostles and the prophets, we're going to see them again later on in Ephesians.

Then they even made their appearance earlier on in chapter one.

The apostles speak of the twelve apostles that were sent out by Jesus Christ, given authority.

They were commissioned by God and sent into the world.

An apostle is literally the, it just means sent one.

Now, sometimes the word apostle is used for people that are sent on an errand somewhere.

You know, your wife sent you to the grocery store, you are an apostle of your wife to the grocery store.

Claim all the authority that goes with it.

If you're an apostle of Jesus Christ, you have all of the authority of Jesus Christ given to you.

That's what happened when Jesus sent out the 12.

He invested his authority in them.

They were on an apostolic mission.

The church had not started yet.

So it's like the first wave, the frontal assault of the first wave of gospel influence in the world is Jesus commissioning the 12 apostles and sending them out.

Wherever they go, if people reject them, they're rejecting Christ.

If people receive them, they're receiving Christ.

If they give them water, it's like they're giving Jesus water.

If Jesus tells the 12 apostles that if you forgive them of their sins, their sins are forgiven.

If you bind up their sins, their sins are bound.

They have all the authority of Jesus Christ.

Now, of course, one of the apostles is a betrayer, is a false apostle, ends up committing suicide.

Judas hanging himself and is replaced.

I believe he was replaced by Paul becoming the 12th apostle.

Some of you might disagree and say it's Matthias.

I don't want to fight over that.

You can be wrong on it for sure.

I have the microphone, the 12th apostle becomes Paul, I think.

And he's commissioned.

He calls himself an apostle to the Gentiles, set apart, given by direct revelation of Jesus Christ.

That's how these apostles function.

They had to have heard the teaching of Jesus and been eyewitnesses of him and sent him to the world.

The apostle Paul had a vision from Jesus.

It was given, communicated to him, and he was set apart and made an apostle to the Gentiles.

And he goes in the world.

That's the foundation, the apostolic preaching.

Now, apostles do not still exist in the world.

It was there is no apostolic mantle that could be passed down to apostolic successors.

And I just park on that because, you know, we're a Bible church.

Do you know that most cities, not just in the United States, but most cities in Latin America and even in Europe and in Africa, the largest church, the largest Christian church in those cities is going to be some kind of Pentecostal or word of faith church.

And they generally believe that there is an apostolic mantle that has been passed down through the ages, and even that their pastors are an apostle.

Their pastors have the apostolic gift.

I went on a tour of one of these big churches in Northern California, and they had a timeline on the wall, stretched down the hallway, wrapped around into the bookstore where you could buy a rolled-up copy of it.

And the timeline was the twelve apostles and who their successors were through church history.

There were some places where it jumped a hundred years or a couple hundred years, 400 years.

And it was major figures from church history put in the apostolic line of secession leading up to their own church's pastor, was in the line of the Apostle John.

I mean, that is a common belief in the world.

But I'm telling you, that's not what the word apostle means in the Bible.

It's not some mantle that is, you can't bequeath it to your successor.

It's something that was received by the 12 people, and then later Paul, that were commissioned by God to go into the world.

There were other apostles that were commissioned by the church and sent in various capacities, but that's not what Paul has in mind here.

He's talking about the apostles that had the foundational ministry of the church.

The New Testament even refers to, in 1 Corinthians, the gift of apostleship.

It was a gift given to the church in its early stages, before Scripture had come along and was completed.

There were these apostles that had the authority of Jesus Christ to speak with his authority, to commit, to do miracles and acts of mercy in his authority, and to bring the gospel to the world with the very authority of Jesus Christ.

That's what an apostle was.

That's not the only.

Oh, by the way, 1 Corinthians 12 28 says God.

God appointed the apostles first in the church.

That doesn't mean they're first in prominence, it means they're first in chronology.

They were the first people appointed in the church.

We're going to see as we work through this morning, the church began in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

But in Acts chapter 2, when the church began, it was the apostles who were there with the front row seat.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

They were there.

That's what it means when it says they are first.

God chose Jesus chose them before others.

He was their first round draft pick, so to speak.

Then he even drafted Judas.

That's remarkable.

He prayed all night and drafted Judas.

Of course, he had a function even in Judas, I think.

But this morning the point is that the apostles were the foundation of the church.

And the apostles give way to the prophets in the rest of the verse there.

The apostles and prophets.

Prophet is someone who speaks the word of God with boldness and with accuracy.

A prophet calls people to repent and conform their lives to the pattern of revealed revelation in Scripture.

That is what a prophet was in the Old Testament.

That's what a prophet is in the New Testament.

Prophets had a specific calling and a specific anointing by God.

Now, many of the prophets did signs and wonders, of course, that confirmed their prophetic ministry in the Old Testament.

But most of what a prophet was was forthelling, not foretelling.

We often think of prophets, it's got such a foretelling element.

When you hear of a prophet, you think the person knows, you know, who's going to win the next election or who's going to win the next Super Bowl or the stock market's going to go up and down.

That's not really what a prophet is.

A prophet is not someone who knows the future.

A prophet is someone who speaks the word of God with boldness and with accuracy and calls people to repent and it's a commissioning by God.

Now, in the Old Testament, many of those prophets did have the capacity to do signs and wonders and speak of future events and give new revelation.

And because of that, if a prophet ever declared something future and that thing didn't come to pass, the consequence was death.

There was no margin for error.

You can't say you're a prophet and then turn around and make a prediction about an election or about the weather was the key thing in the Old Testament.

I'm a prophet, and I'll tell you what, it's gonna rain next week, so go ahead and get planting.

And it doesn't rain next week.

That's a problem.

And that's a problem mostly for you because you would be dead at that point.

In the New Testament, there's also a prophetic office and a prophetic ministry.

These are people that spoke the word of God with boldness and with accuracy that called people to repent of their sins and to believe the gospel.

And they did so, attested to with signs and wonders, like the prophets in the Old Testament.

It was not largely a foretelling ministry.

They weren't often telling things about the future.

Oh, they did in some cases.

They did tell Paul, you go to go to Jerusalem, you're gonna get bound and hand over.

The prophet Agabus told Paul that, and that came to pass.

Prophets in the New Testament, much like prophets in the old, called people to repent of their sins, called people to believe in the coming Savior, and called people to do so in light of the prophetic authority they had.

The prophets also existed for a short time, and then the ministry ended.

The gift of prophets, there are no more prophets in the church in that sense, by somebody having a specific anointing where they can speak the word of God in that kind of prophetic way with the ability to say things about the future or to confirm it with signs and wonders.

That was a temporary gift given to the church while the church was being established.

Or you could say it like this: it was a gift that was part of the church's foundation.

You don't keep building on the foundation later, it's a foundational ministry in the church.

Once the foundation is laid, the apostles and the prophets dissipate.

They give way to the walls, which we'll get to in a few minutes.

But I just want you to understand because again, our Christian world is filled with people who call themselves prophets and they say things, they make predictions about the future.

And then the predictions don't come to pass.

And then what?

Do you go kill them?

I mean, don't, please don't.

But it is a bit of a dilemma when a prophet says, hey, I'm prophet so-and-so, and with my prophetic ministry and my track record, I say that this is going to come to be, and then this doesn't come to be.

What's that left with?

You either say, Well, it would have come to be, but the devil intervened and the devil was able to outmuscle God.

Or it says, you know, it really did come to be, you guys are all just wrong about what you're watching.

Or the most common response that you see people today saying is that prophets in the New Testament aren't always accurate.

There's a margin of error for New Testament prophets.

Old Testament prophets, no margin of error.

New Testament prophets, oh, it's like baseball, you know, they about 300, that's great.

You know, they get it right a third of the time.

That's great, that's better than most.

To which I say, no, it's not.

You know, a coin is right 50% of the time.

Doesn't make it a prophet.

Prophets were a temporary gift given to the church.

They were foundational, is Paul's point here.

They were the foundation of the church.

And there's a third component of this blueprint here, you the apostles and the prophets.

Thirdly, you have verse 20, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

Christ Jesus being the cornerstone.

No, a cornerstone.

In Western architecture, a cornerstone is often put on last.

So they build the building, they slide like some stone they left in an open spot on the outside of it with a little plaque on it that says this building was designed by so-and-so and paid for by so-and-so, and the mayor was so-and-so kind of thing.

It's put on the very last.

They don't put it on while it's being built because if they run out of money or if it falls apart, it's got the mayor's name on it, and that's just embarrassing.

So they put it on last.

You know, when the building is dedicated, they unveil the cornerstone.

That's not the way it was in the Roman architecture.

The cornerstone goes first.

So they decide what shape they want the building, what size they want the building.

They start with the cornerstone.

It is the biggest stone in the building.

It goes in the corner and it has to have a 90-degree angle, and everything else gets lined up on the cornerstone.

So you build both walls off of the cornerstone.

The cornerstone has to be perfect.

If it's too small, the building will be too small.

If it's too big, you're going to run out of material.

If the edges aren't straight, the wall is going to curve in sideways.

You look down the building, you're like, that's supposed to be a square.

That thing looks like a triangle.

The cornerstone was bad.

So a lot of emphasis went on the cornerstone.

The architect would design the building, he would go find the cornerstone.

The builder would be up on the hill.

They'd level the hill, they'd grade it for where the building's going to be.

Now the workers have to bring the cornerstone up the hill and put it there.

And the moment of truth is the builder has to look at it, and the builder, it's like when the FedEx people deliver an important package.

You've got to size it up and sign off on it.

And if you sign off on it, and then you say, oh, it's actually scratched.

No, I'm sorry, you signed off on it.

That's what happens here.

The builder comes up and the cornerstone, the workers bring the cornerstone up and the builder looks at it, and is it straight?

Is it the right size?

Do the lines go in the right direction?

If so, you build on it.

If not, that's problems.

Because you can't really return the cornerstone.

What happens is it just gets pushed aside, and then probably a fight and an argument takes place.

Who knows?

Probably people kill each other as this thing plays out.

And then eventually either they give up on building it, they use the rejected cornerstone, or they cave in and bring in a new cornerstone.

That's the way this would play out.

The image here is that Jesus is the cornerstone of the church.

In other words, everything lines up on him.

Everything in the church has to be built in accordance with his specifications.

If something doesn't line up with him, it is out of bounds.

It is out of whack.

It's not truly part of the church.

It's misplaced.

So things have to line up with the cornerstone.

Now, this imagery does not begin in the New Testament.

And this was fascinating for me to discover, and I hope you shared my joy in this, but it's Isaiah chapter 28.

Isaiah 28 · chapter mention

You don't need to flip there, I'll just kind of walk you through it and then I'll put the key verse on the screen.

But Isaiah 28 is a chapter of rebuke towards Ephraim and rebuke towards Israel.

They're sinning and God's going to judge them.

They're drunkards and they're idol worshiping, and God is going to pour out his wrath on them because they're rejecting him.

That's Isaiah 28.

But in there it says, part of your punishment is going to be that foreign people, people speaking a foreign language, is what it says.

People speaking a strange language will show up at the temple and speak in that strange language.

That's a sign of judgment on you, Israel.

Now that is a prophecy that is fulfilled in the New Testament in Acts chapter 2, when the Holy Spirit begins the church by saving people through the gospel preaching.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The first believers get added into the church, the apostles are there as the foundation, the gospel preaching happens, people get saved, and everybody is speaking in foreign languages, speaking in tongues.

There were legitimate foreign languages that the Gentiles spoke in, the Jews were from all the dispersion were there, and they're speaking in foreign languages.

That is the prophecy against Israel.

It's fulfilled in the church.

Israel is being broken off because of their obstinates and disbelief, and the church is being started right there.

The foundation has dropped in on their heads, and you know that because people are speaking in the foreign languages.

That's Isaiah 28.

The next part of Isaiah 28 is what I want you to see.

When you're surrounded by people speaking those foreign languages, God says, Thus says the Lord Yahweh, behold, I am the one who is laid as the foundation in Zion.

A stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation.

Whoever believes will not be in haste.

So God tells the Israelites, listen, because of your sin, you're going to be, your whole old covenant system is going to be obsolete.

A new foundation is going to come and land on top of you and obliterate this.

And you're going to see people speaking in foreign languages walking around on it.

And when that happens, know that I am the one who was myself the cornerstone.

I did this.

This is my foundation.

I sent you the foundation.

I sent you the cornerstone.

This is me.

Don't reject it because of the Gentiles involved in it.

This is me, Yahweh says.

It's important to use this as covenant name.

Thus says the Lord Yahweh, this is me who did this.

Jesus picks up on this in the New Testament, Matthew.

He tells the parable of the vineyard, the bloody vineyard is what it's called.

A man has a vineyard.

He leases it out to people.

And then he sends his messengers to get the produce, to get the rent.

And the people who've leased the vineyard don't pay the rent.

Instead, they beat up the messengers.

So he sends them more messengers and they beat up more, and they even kill some of the messengers.

And so then the vineyard owner says, You know what?

I'm going to send my own son.

And so he sends his son.

And you remember what they do in the parable?

They murder the son.

And so Jesus says to the Pharisees, What do you think the vineyard owner is going to do now?

And the Pharisees say, Well, he's going to send in an army and he's going to kill those miserable wretches.

That's what he's going to do.

They didn't realize he was talking about them.

He didn't realize that they were the bad guys in the story.

That God sent them prophets and they killed the prophets.

And now God has sent his son and they're about to murder Jesus.

So of course God is going to come in and give them judgment.

And then he ends the parable with this, Matthew 21, 42.

Jesus said to them, Have you never read in the scriptures?

And I just love it when Jesus says that to the Pharisees.

Have you never read in the scriptures?

The stone that the builders rejected, it has become the cornerstone.

This was the Lord's doing.

And it is marvelous in our eyes.

That's what Jesus ends that parable with.

That you rejected the prophets, you are now going to murder the Son, and by murdering him, it's become the stone the builders rejected.

That's the image that Jesus becomes the cornerstone because the builders rejected him.

So the full image here.

They receive the cornerstone.

The old covenant Israelites receive the cornerstone.

They place it, they look at it, and they say, This is not right.

This doesn't line up right.

This is not the right size.

We reject this.

Plus, there's all these people speaking foreign languages walking around it.

No.

So they push it aside.

In fact, if you go to Israel today and you walk along the West Wall, you go along the west wall of the temple and the tunnels down there, and you get to a cornerstone that was literally rejected.

When they rebuild the temple, there's a massive cornerstone that was rejected, and they kind of put the new one right next to it and just shifted the temple a little bit and built a new one off a new cornerstone there.

You can climb on it and everything.

It's in a tunnel, but it's a huge stone, you can climb on it.

That's what the builders do.

They look at the cornerstone, which is Jesus, and they reject him.

They throw him down the hill.

Then they turn around and they wait for the right cornerstone to come.

They don't realize that the cornerstone they rejected was the one that God sent.

And so they stand there, you know, tapping their foot, looking around, where are the builders?

Where's the next cornerstone?

Where is it?

They don't realize it's behind them.

And the workers come, and what do the workers do?

They build the temple on the stone the builders rejected.

They get to work, and now there's a massive temple behind them built.

How humiliating would that be if you're the builder?

You reject this cornerstone and you demand a new one, and all of your workers just start working on the one you rejected.

And then things get totally out of control.

Back in, we won't go to Matthew 21, but the then the whole cornerstone falls on them and crushes them.

So they reject it.

They're binding their own time, waiting for the next one, and then it falls from heaven and lands on top of them and it obliterates the whole build site.

That's the image.

So you can even look at it on your screen there.

The cornerstone is the cross, the cornerstone is Jesus Christ.

He is the cornerstone.

The foundation is the apostles and the prophets.

They are spread out.

And now, on top of that, becomes us.

We are built into this temple also.

We are our bricks.

That's what it says in verse 21.

We're the whole structure, us being joins together, grows into a holy temple in whom you also are being built together.

So this temple, the cornerstone is Jesus.

The foundation is the apostles or prophets, and then you are also being in it.

It's Jesus, the apostles, the prophets, and you.

Oh my.

You're being built into it.

Remember, the Ephesians are feeling isolated.

They're feeling on the outs with the Roman religion.

They're feeling like it's outside of them.

They have these nice buildings, these massive buildings.

And Paul's telling them, do you understand that you are part of the temple of God?

It's not even that you're outside of it.

You're far, remember in Ephesians 2, the dynamic was far versus near.

You used to be far.

Forget that.

You're not even near anymore.

You are it.

You are it.

You think of this image at work.

Say you work for a big organization.

You used to be far away from the boss, far away from the decision makers.

You were out in the field somewhere, far away from them.

Then you get promoted and promoted, and soon you get to be near the boss.

You're right outside the door.

You're near the boss.

And then to fill the image here, you become that person.

You become the boss.

There's no more when you are the boss, when you're in charge, there's no more near, far to power dynamic.

You're it.

That's the image in Ephesians 2.

The Gentiles used to be far away from gospel promises.

They're brought near, and then they are the promise.

They are in the temple.

They are the temple.

The word, by the way, it's not even the word for brick.

Verse 22 in him, you are also being built together.

That's one word in the Greek.

It's a really cool word.

Greek has a word for a wall that comes with the pillars, with the big studs or posts already pre-built into the wall.

So I think of, you know, in the English world we got, we have drywall.

We have one word for drywall.

It has no studs or pillars behind it.

And then you have another word for like the whole, the whole wall of the house has got the prefabricated, you know, posts all built together in a massive structure.

That's lifted up at once.

Greek has its own word for that.

That's this word here.

You're not the drywall of the temple.

You're not even bricks in the temple.

You're the whole wall built together with studs and everything.

You are the pillars lifted up into the temple.

Do you remember the most outrageous feature of the temple of Artemis was the 130 pillars that ran around the outside of it, 60 feet tall?

Paul's telling the Ephesian believers if you are in Christ, Jesus is the cornerstone, the apostles and prophets are the foundation, and you are the pillars.

You insignificant believers in the world site.

You marginalized believers in the world site.

You are the very pillars of the temple of God.

Lifted up and put into place.

And this whole new temple kind of lands on the earth.

It lands on the old temple.

It obliterates, obliterates the Old Testament distinction between near and far.

It crushes the old covenant law-keeping.

It smashes the wall of separation between Jew and Gentiles.

It shatters the old regime and triumphantly ushers in a new world order.

That's what happens when this temple falls from heaven onto the earth.

Churches have had building or programs before, you know?

I've seen pictures of building programs.

You usually have the pastor out there with a shovel and like the head elder out there with a shovel, both of them wearing hard hats, which I've always found was weird because there's not like anything there's no walls or anything to fall on them.

They're in a field with a shovel, but the hard hat is a key part of it, I guess.

Surrounded by the other elders and casseroles.

You know the picture I'm talking about.

This is not a building program like that.

This is a building program where the temple falls from heaven and lands on top of everybody who rejected Jesus Christ.

And in its place is a new thing.

Jesus is the cornerstone of.

The apostles and prophets were the foundation of, and every believer exists in it as a temple, as a pillar of the temple.

Well, that's the building plan.

Next we see the office expansion.

We see the office expansion.

This is a temple that is growing.

It is being expanded.

It's being added to.

Remember, there used to be this far near dynamic, and now people, believers are added to the temple all the time.

There's new pillars always being put in the temple.

Look at the end of verse 20, or the middle of verse 21, in whom the whole structure, in whom being Jesus Christ, the whole structure is joined together and it grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

So the analogy gets mixed here a little bit, the metaphor gets mixed, because this is a cornerstone that is literally touching every brick in the building.

That's not the way a normal cornerstone works.

It's more in keeping with divine analogy.

Jesus is the cornerstone, but he is the cornerstone that has branched out and is engaged with every single pillar and post of the temple.

It's all built on him.

He's in all of it.

And it is still growing.

The temple keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

More people keep getting added and saved to the church.

Being built together.

Because it's growing.

Notice the word grows into a holy temple.

You don't usually use the word grows for a building.

I talked to a business owner at Emmanuel recently, who told me that his business is growing, and so he's expanding his building.

That's normally the way you would work.

You would normally say, My business grows, so the building expands.

If you said your building grows, that implies like material life to it or something.

Here, Paul says that the church is growing as people are coming to faith.

It's growing as people are growing in godliness.

Do you understand that as you grow in godliness, the church grows?

As you become more mature in the faith, the church grows.

As you put off sin and put on righteousness, the church grows.

And as other people come to faith in Christ, the church grows.

It grows numerically and it grows structurally, it grows in strength and it grows in durability by maturity in the believers.

It's alive.

You know, the big defect of a building is that it's not mobile.

You can't pick up and move.

You know, a building is put there, especially one on a foundation.

The church, it's adaptable.

The church is mobile and agile.

It can, because it's not a building, it's the con it's the congregation of people, it can adapt.

And this is the whole point of the church in Ephesus.

They may not have a building, but they have the temple of God, and it is growing on every street corner.

It's growing wherever there are believers gathered.

The church has seen through church history its buildings systematically shut down and burned down and destroyed.

You saw a massive church in China destroyed a few weeks ago or a few months ago, I guess, now, and we watched a video of that last Sunday.

You remember even like four or five years ago when ISIS was on the gain in Iraq, in Iran, and Syria?

It was probably five years ago now, and there was this idea by ISIS they were going to eliminate Christianity from that crescent part of the world.

They were going to eliminate all churches and all architects.

And all Christian legacy and heritage that we're going to stamp out Christianity from the world.

But you know that's not effective.

You can't stamp out Christianity by tearing down the church.

Because you can't tear down the church.

You can knock down buildings and the church will find a way to gather.

You can knock down their structures and the church will find a way to meet.

This has been the lesson throughout church history: the persecution is only the rain that causes the flower to bloom all the brighter.

The darker the night, the brighter the light, the harder people go against tearing down the church, the more the church pops up.

And that's the lesson here because it is a growing organism.

It's a growing building.

I mean, Jesus we know the way the story ends.

Jesus wins, the church is persecuted through this world, but Jesus wins.

The church is raptured and ushered into glory.

Someone told me today.

Today you can visit Ephesus, and there are people selling t-shirts outside.

You know, it's a tourist attraction.

The temple of Artemis, the temple of Diana, is torn down.

It's in rubble and ruins.

But you can buy a t-shirt outside of it that says Diana is the greatest.

It's probably Christian tourists that are buying that t-shirt too to give to their grandchildren.

The irony is come full circle.

You know, who whose temple is ultimately bigger?

The temple of Diana can be built up and can be torn down.

The temple of God lasts forever.

It's not going anywhere.

So we saw the building plan that shows us the church is new.

We saw the office expansion that shows us the church is growing.

And thirdly, we see the zoning variance.

The zoning variance that the church is unique.

You know what a zoning variance is.

If you buy a house or a property in a place and it's not zoned for what you want to use it for, it's supposed to have the function that everything else on the block has.

So you can't buy a residential house and put it in a Starbucks.

You know, you need a zoning variance to get that.

Everything on the residential street should be residential, everything in a business street should be business.

So what I mean by this is that the church is not going to fit in.

It's not going to look like the other temples.

Christianity is not one of all the religions in the world.

It doesn't have temples that look like all the other temples in the world.

It's going to look and act and be fundamentally and even foundationally different.

And you see this in verse 21.

Everything is being grown together into a holy temple in the Lord.

And you see the same phrase repeated in verse 22: into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

That's what's unique about this.

In the Old Testament, God was pleased to dwell in the tabernacle.

He was then pleased to dwell in the temple.

Then under Manasseh, the God's Spirit leaves the temple and does not return.

Ezra dedicates the temple, God's Spirit doesn't return to it.

It's just a building.

And then when God begins the church in Acts chapter 2, the flames of fire and those that are speaking the foreign languages come.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

People are sealed with the Spirit and made into a temple for God.

Believers are sealed with the Holy Spirit.

This is described in Ephesians 1.

God gives them faith.

He regenerates their hearts.

He seals them as a guarantee for the day of salvation.

In Ephesians 2, God gives them faith to the inner working of the Holy Spirit.

It separates you, it gives you spiritual life, and the Spirit abides in you.

As the Spirit abides in Jew and Gentile together, rich and poor together, they're grafted into one new body that transcends the divides of this world as the Holy Spirit himself dwells among men.

That's the idea behind this.

This is not a normal temple.

Even the Jewish temple had the walls up that, you know, separated the women and the Gentiles, and even the Jews couldn't go into the Holy of Holies except the high priest and he once a year.

There's none of that.

That's all torn down.

This is a temple where we are, we are the dwelling place of God.

We don't go to a place to meet with God.

We are the place where God meets with us.

In a sense, God sanctified the world by coming to the world incarnate in Jesus Christ.

But in a more particular sense, he builds a temple for himself that is not the whole world.

He builds a temple for himself that is the hearts of believers who are united together in church fellowship.

That's the temple that is grown.

It is a dwelling place for God Himself.

Solomon prayed and prayed in 1 Kings 8 that God would fill the temple with his presence, and God did.

And then God left.

And now God fills the earth with his presence in the hearts of believers.

We are being built.

The phrase into, the preposition for into here, it's not the normal word you would expect to be saying, you know, that what's that building?

Oh, it's going to be built into a house.

That's not the normal word.

The preposition that's used here is ice.

It's this word that means you're being, you're actually becoming it.

You're being morphed into it.

You're being put into the temple for God.

You are becoming the place yourself where God will dwell with mankind.

Do you see how that's the response to the Ephesians dilemma?

Oh, they're so isolated.

Oh, they're so neglected.

Oh, their culture is so religious and they can't participate.

Why can't they have their own big temple too?

Why can't the churches just pool their money together and build a massive temple for Jesus?

Then everybody will take him seriously.

Then they'll know the truth about then they'll stop messing with Christians because they'll know they're important.

And Paul says, that's the wrong field to play the game on.

You need to understand that God has made you into a church where he himself dwells.

Now I said at the beginning I would end here.

I want to point out to you that I think our culture has more in common with the Romans than you might think.

We too have a functional religion.

And as I read older commentaries on Ephesians, they often point out kind of the functional religion for most Americans is family and work ethic.

If you work hard and you provide for your family, you are a good person and you have security in your life.

And so I think the temptation through the years has been for Americans to put hope and trust in their family and in their work ethic.

Their work ethic will deliver them, their family will give them hope and security for the future.

So basically it's worshiping a family, and that's what kind of has to be exposed, I think, through much of American history.

But as I look at the last like 20 years, I just can't help but wonder if there's a different religion that has cropped up in our society, and that is certainly the religion of politics.

Have you seen it before?

If you define religion as what people look to for their safety and security, where they put their hope, where they offer their devotion, what consumes their thoughts, what makes them worried if it doesn't deliver, it's certainly it's politics.

Certainly.

And that's not to say there's nothing good to be had in politics.

Certainly, politics is the common grace of the world, an act of loving your neighbor is engaging in your world in a place that extends common grace and protects families and children and all that.

I certainly believe that.

But that's very different than putting your hope in politics.

And when you say things like, oh, if this election doesn't go a certain way, there's not going to be hope and security and a strong future for my children, then that is cross the line into worship.

When you start trusting politics to deliver safety and security for your family and your future, you have entered a Roman temple.

In fact, our Capitol building, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, our the Statue of Liberty are literally designed like the Roman architecture, the Roman gods and goddesses, really to convey that purpose.

They're worthy of worship, and so many of us willingly give them our hearts.

But I implore you to recognize that as the false religion that it is.

There is no hope and security to be found in politics.

There is no hope.

If your hope and security for your future and your family and their children, their children's children, can hinge on a county's election returns, then you might have a false religion.

Our hope and security is not in this world.

Our hope and security is in the kingdom of God through Jesus Christ.

It is his kingdom that reigns over all.

Listen, God did not promise that he would give you a Christian nation.

He did not promise that he would give you a certain election, and he did not promise that he would redeem our society or any component of our society.

God promised that he would redeem individuals as they come to saving faith in Christ.

Now I praise God for people active in politics.

I see many of you out here right now, and I am thankful it is a valid expression of loving, loving your neighbor, making a world that is suitable to live in as an expression of common grace.

And I don't feel hesitant in saying this because I know those people who are most involved with it look to it least for their security.

It tends to be those who are a little bit on the outside of it, that are confident that security and prosperity for the future comes from it, and you will be so disappointed.

That is a functional religion.

Were the Roman gods ever satisfied with their sacrifices?

No, they're always they're insatiable.

They're always hungry.

And so it is with the gods of power, the gods of politics, the gods of family, the gods of finances, the gods of work ethic.

They will never be satisfied with what you give them.

You will always have to try harder next time.

You will always have to bring a better sacrifice next time.

It will never be accepted.

Instead, come to the Lord and recognize that his kingdom reigns over all.

His kingdom offers hope and a future that does not come from the shifting winds of change of this world, but comes from being rooted in Jesus Christ and his surpassing glory.

Lord, we're thankful for your kingdom which you have established in this earth.

It reigns over all.

We love the church.

Our hearts are knit up here, our hearts are bound here.

And that's because our hearts are knit by you and in you.

What a great mystery that you are our king.

We know that your kingdom is over all the world.

You've placed all things under your feet, but we know right now things will go from bad to worse.

We're thankful the common grace delays that descent in some cultures and some nations and not in others.

But we know that the end will come, that things will get worse to worse, and then Jesus returns and establishes his kingdom in person.

I pray that that day would hasten.

But in the meantime, we serve as citizens of those strangers to this world.

Citizens of your kingdom, strangers in this world, aliens to this world, but at home in the next, sons and daughters to you.

So, Lord, we worship you as our King.

And we're thankful for the church where you dwell through our faith.

It's in your son's name we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.