built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone.being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone;And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone;
12 sermons cite this verse
… so then you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are citizens with the saints you are also members of the household of god built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with jesus christ himself the cornerstone and in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. My friends, this is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. you know when I first told one of my spiritual mentors back home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that I was feeling called to seminary, that I might feel that divine nudge to be a pastor, that spiritual mentor of mine responded by saying this, Chris, anyone who wants to be a good Christian should definitely not be a pastor. Now, this person, this person who still is a very meaningful figure in my life, this person who has decades of ministry experience, well, he was probably being a little too pessimistic that day. …
Ephesians 2 and 19 puts it like this. It says that we are built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Ephesians 2, 19 and 20. Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. Isn't that beautiful? Tell somebody I've got a stone of help. Jesus Christ. You see, we too have a place where our sins had caused us to see the glory of God depart from our life. and we were hopeless and we were helpless, but when we prayed and we repented like Samuel and Israel did, the glory came back, and Jesus Christ became our Ebenezer stone. We have a stone of help. God took our punishment. God took our sins. God took our failures, and He put them on Calvary's hill. and I don't care what you face, he'll never leave you, and he'll never forsake you, and you need to go on and make a declaration. I can't promise you you won't go through the stuff, but I can promise you up to this point and up to this very moment that you're breathing, listening to me wherever you are, the Lord has helped you. …
… Notice this, and members of the household of God. having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone in whom the whole building, here it is, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord in whom you are also being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Verse 21 says this, being fitted together. I want to talk to you from this title or subject, if you're taking notes, and I ask that you would. Just a simple thought in the form of a question. Are you fit for the body? Are you fit for the body? Growing up, there was something that my family enjoyed doing, and that was putting puzzles together, different types of puzzles. Now, me personally, I enjoyed putting puzzles together, but I think my favorite were those types of puzzles that only had probably about 15 pieces. You know, they're real big. It was very obviously where they went and things of that sort. …
… and the apostle Paul would say about him later in Ephesians 2.20. And if you doubt what I'm saying, you need to look up Ephesians 2.20 later. You know what the apostle Paul said about Jesus? He said, the foundation of our faith is a person, Jesus. The cornerstone, the very first stone laid, the thing that determines everything else about the building, the foundation of our faith is not it is written. The foundation of our faith is something happened. God sent his son into the world. The same baby that grew to be a man that after his resurrection would gather his closest followers and he would say something that was just crazy. Nobody would say this unless there was some evidence to back it up. and they'd seen him die. They knew where he was buried. Several of them had breakfast later with him on the beach. And now there he was alive in front of all of them. And he makes a statement that I hope you'll wrestle with. He says, no, but who would say this? All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Do you know what the final authority for your life as a Christian is? …
… Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household. Built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone, in him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. This is God's Word. We've been looking at the passage and we say there's a number of metaphors that Paul uses to explain what the church is and therefore what kind of lives we have in connection with Christ. We've been spending most of our time on the longer metaphor, which has to do with the idea that Christians, that the church is God's dwelling place, a holy temple. But tonight we take a look at the first of the metaphors in this sentence, in this paragraph. Consequently, you are no longer strangers, or as the translation we have here, you are no longer foreigners or aliens, But, fellow citizens with God's people. …
… but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. For a number of weeks we've been looking at this idea, this metaphor, this concept, this teaching, that to be a Christian means that you are, as it says here, a dwelling place of God the Spirit. We are being joined together and are rising to become a holy temple in the Lord. and we've seen that Paul is really teaching us quite a few things. In one week, we talked about the fact that Paul is saying that Christians are not designed to stand on their own. No human being is designed to stand on his or her own, that we need each other, and we talked about the unity, and we talked about the fact that just attending a church and getting some inspiration out of it is not the same thing as being built together at all, and that's another sermon, isn't it? Yes, so let's avoid it. Then the second week, we looked at the fact that this also teaches us that since we are a dwelling place of God the Spirit, we're His house, that means we have an access to Him. He interpenetrates us with His presence. We have access to His very face, …
… the page where you are if you've been singing, along with the rest of the congregation. Ephesians 2, verses 19 to 22. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. we've said that there's actually three metaphors in this particular paragraph that describes the church. And the first one is we are citizens in a kingdom. And then secondly, we are members of God's household, members of his family. But thirdly, and the one we've been looking at for a couple of weeks and which we are going to continue to look at tonight is we are building blocks in a house. It says here we are actually built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ being the cornerstone. We are building blocks in a building joined together, rising to become a holy temple, a dwelling place of God where he lives by his spirit. Now, a couple weeks ago we said that Paul's trying to get a number of things across to us. He's trying to show us if we're building blocks in a temple of God's spirit, it means that we need each other. …
… but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. Now, this section, as we said last week, gives us three pictures of the church. It's possible for a church, for a local church, for the church in general, to be characterized by such supernaturally excellent quality, a supernaturally excellent quality to its relationships. It's possible that our community would be so remarkable that people flock to it like moths to a flame. The only time I can ever remember being in what probably the Bible would define as a revival. I mean, people are always talking about revival. I've actually been through one. I saw a little group of Christians scared, huddling together, 10 or 12 on a college campus, scroll to about 120 people, mostly through conversions over a very, very brief period of time, over a matter of months. And I do remember, because I was a part of that, I was one of those 12 little scared ones, brand new Christian really myself, and not a terribly consistent living Christian at all at that point, a lot of hypocrisy in my life. Yet I saw a scroll largely through the strength of the quality of relationships in the community. We did not know how to articulate the …
… Verse 19, consequently, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and Arise is to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. Now, we're talking about the church. We go back to it. Why? Two things, I think, in my experience, are necessary for people to cross the line from unbelief to belief. To cross the line from being outside of the Christian faith into the Christian faith. Two things. You have to demonstrate to people, and some of you are in the midst of seeking this out and this happening to you right now. you need first of all to have the credibility of the christian faith demonstrated to you and then secondly you need to have the plausibility or the personal relevance of the christian faith demonstrated to you the credibility and the plausibility the credibility means is it intellectually coherent does it stand up to the evidence the credibility the plausibility has more to do with, does it have the ring of reality? …
… the dimensions. What's beautiful about the whole picture is it says you are no longer foreigners, you are members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises. Let me just show you what all this means. If the church is a temple and you are stones, living stones, first of all, living stones have to be hewn out of the quarry. How do you become a building block? Somebody's got to cut you out, and that's conversion. That's conversion. what makes you buildable what makes you buildable somebody has to cut you out and conversion makes you distinct so that when Christians get together they've been hewn at the quarry through the experience of conversion we'll talk about that next week and so when you get together you fit you know at the quarry they bring the stones out the temple in the Old Testament all the stones were shaped at the quarry When they brought the stones out, they made them into perfect squares so that when they got to the temple site, the temple was built up in silence. …
… nickels, and dimes. What would I do with it? Well, I don't know. What would you do with it? You better look at Ephesians 2, verses 11 to 20. Read it. Read it this week. Read what it says about the church. It's a bank account, and it's in your name. What have you been doing about it? Well, we're only getting started. Let's get started. Paul very humbly lays down a foundation principle and says, and I'll just summarize it here and then we'll unpack it. He says, if you understand the cross, any two people should be able to get along. and if you're not getting along two people who say they believe you're not thinking about the cross you don't understand it you're not taking it in see look he says verse 14 for he himself is our peace who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations his purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two making peace, and in his one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death the hostility. Now, let me show you a very interesting case study and the principles that we're supposed to draw out of it. …
… Not only are we the body of Christ as the church, but he says in this particular chapter, verse 19, So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of God's household, that is, God's building, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. Now, what he's saying here is this. He says, first of all, we are the body of Christ, the living extension of Christ here on earth. Secondly, he says we are a building. And that is that you and I are like stones in the temple of God. The temple of God on this earth is the coming together of God's people. And the coming together of God's people, he says, you are that temple. …