We Don’t Go to Church, We ARE the Church Ephesians 2:19-22

 We Don’t Go to Church, We ARE the Church 

Ephesians 2:19-22

 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his 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.

1. Introduction

There's a wonderful story about a Chicago bank that once asked for a letter of recommendation on a young Bostonian being considered for employment. The Boston investment house could not say enough about the young man. His father, they wrote, was a Cabot; his mother was a Lowell. Further back was a happy blend of Saltonstalls, Peabodys, and others of Boston's finest families. His recommendation was given without hesitation.

Several days later, the Chicago bank sent a note saying the information supplied was altogether inadequate. It read: "We are not contemplating using the young man for breeding purposes. Just for work." Neither is God a respecter of persons but accepts those from every family, nation, and race who fear him and work for his Kingdom. 

We just finished up a series about revival in our lives. How are you feeling about that? Because I know that I am excited to see what’s been going on in my life. I feel so much closer to the Lord than I have in a while, and I feel like there’s great things about to happen. But we turn our attention to something today that I think should be a byproduct of seeing revival in our lives: we should want to work in the church. Now, this is not a ‘let’s browbeat everyone into a job’ type of sermon. In my experience, it’s never an effective way of getting people to want to work in the church! In fact, it usually has the opposite effect! No, today, I want you to leave thinking about how God wants you to work in the KINGDOM.

I titled today’s sermon we don’t go to church, we ARE the church. But why is that? Let’s look at the scripture today in a deeper way.

II. New Citizenship - v19

The first verse of this passage of scripture talks to us about not being foreigners or strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people, and members of his household. My uncle is Cuban. He escaped from Cuba a long time ago, and when he came to the United States, he was very often viewed in a poor light because of how the Cuban government was and still is. He was often viewed as a threat to the people around him. But, today he is a United States citizen, having become a citizen through one of the most difficult ways to do so, which was to serve in the United States National Guard, specifically in the Air Force. He could tell you what it is like to have a new citizenship in a place that gives you so much more opportunity than where he grew up. He could tell you how much he loves his fellow citizens, but most of all, he could tell you about the freedom he has to worship and to love God freely in this country.

When we look at this first verse, we have to understand that God wanted us to be his people. He wants us to take up citizenship in his land. As one author put it, strangers tells of isolation and anonymity, and foreigners are those in a country where they have no standing, rights, or protection. When we are not Christians, this is exactly what we are! We are in sin, we have no rights, no standing in God’s kingdom, and most importantly, we have no protection against suffering the death that we deserve.

In another sense, too, Paul was using the Roman citizenship in a way to emphasize how we have a greater responsibility when we are taken into God’s family. Just as we mentioned, those who are not of a country don’t enjoy the same benefits as citizens do. This was especially true of Roman citizenship. Do you remember that there were two times where Paul was either thrown in jail or about to be beaten by the Roman officials, and he reminded them that he was a Roman citizen? Paul knew of the great good that could be had from being a citizen of a great empire like Rome’s. He knew that the heavenly citizenship was greater than this, though. And he knew that the citizenship in Heaven was worth more than any citizenship here on earth. 

III. New Cornerstone v20

Let us move to the next verse here. We see that Paul writes that the foundation of the saints is that of the apostles and the prophets, but that Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone. Now, you might be wondering, weren’t we just talking about citizenship and how the church specifically ISN”T a building? I mean, how can you just say that we are the church but yet talk about a building instead? Well, obviously Paul was using a metaphor here, talking in a way much like how we are the body of Christ. I remember that someone asked one time which finger they were for the hand of Christ if they are part of the body of Christ. Of course, that is an old joke, but it is a reminder that we are part of something bigger than ourselves in our faith. But how does this apply to what we are talking about?

We can know that the foundation of our faith comes from God, first and foremost. But it was the job of the apostles and of the prophets to be the mouthpiece and the scribes of God’s word to people here on Earth. But we have to note that without a cornerstone, there can be no true foundation. Why is that? A cornerstone is the first stone to be set in the construction of a building. All the other stones, walls, and everything else in the building is set in reference to this stone, determining the position of the entire structure.

Think about this, look at John 1:1-5: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” In the beginning was the Word. He was with God in the beginning, and through him all things were made. Does this sound like something that might have been set before all other things, and then every other thing was set from it? Jesus Christ truly is the cornerstone to everything in our lives!

IV. New Building v21

But there is more to this building than just the cornerstone. I mean, three walls and a roof don’t make a house, right? Paul points out that it’s necessary for the ‘building’ of God’s household to fit together. It’s an interesting picture that Paul shows here: the pieces of God’s house don’t fit together naturally. Rather, God fits them together to create the church itself. He makes us into one church, one structure, one people of God. To be able to do that, sometimes God adds to us. We know this because we all are uniquely gifted things from the Holy Spirit. But also, it comes from removing material, too. It’s removing the spiritual baggage in our lives. It comes from removing sinfulness from us. It comes from removing hatred and regret. He does this so that we can be part of the church complete! We become the congregation.

But what is a congregation? Some of the synonyms are an ingathering, a mob, a rally, or an assembly. Most importantly, though, a congregation is the act of bringing together. We bring ourselves into the body of Christ, and build a new Temple for him through all of us. We come together to live as pure of a life together as a congregation body that is pleasing to the Lord, not only in our worship of him, but in our actual lives, too! We have to be united as a body to live in a way that is pleasing to the Lord.

V. New Church v22

We then turn to the final verse of this passage. We are being built together through Jesus to become the dwelling in which God lives by His spirit. In short, the new church, the actual church, not just a building of mortar and brick, is all of us. All of this happens through the Spirit. It is through the spirit that we worship. Jesus reminds us in John 4:24 that “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” We live by the spirit, as we see in Galatians 5:25, which says “if we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.” We are led by the spirit and we walk by the spirit, which Paul wrote in Galatians 5:16-18, writing “walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.” When we walk in the spirit and live by it, taught by it, and follow it, we are able to be apart of the entire building of God. Just as salvation is something owed purely to the grace of God, success in the Christian life is owed entirely to the power of God through the Holy Spirit. It is through the Holy Spirit that we can understand that we are truly the Church rather than just a simple building being the church. 

Through this passage, Paul once again highlights the reality of Christian unity God is the emphasis of the church, and that church, which is truly God’s people, is made up of all the individual parts which work together to worship Him. Regardless of our background, and regardless of our past sins, God can forgive and make us part of his family and make us part of his Kingdom. He creates a new family among believers, joining us together both in this life and in eternity.

VI. Conclusion

We are all uniquely created and are a part of the Church itself. I was reading an interesting story this week about a Presbyterian minister named Howard Hendricks who was ministering at the 4th Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. He was giving a message at a Thursday morning father-son breakfast one week. There were lots of military, various government workers, and just a bunch of others from all over the Washington D.C. area. After finishing speaking, he looked over the crowd milling about, and noticed some people picking up chairs and stacking them. He saw others picking up the rest of the leftovers. But one particular person caught his eye: it was longtime Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield. Hatfield was the longest-serving Senator in Oregon history, a major Senator over many many years. What was he doing there? Was he there to press the flesh? Was he there to make some sort of impression for the press? No. He was there stacking chairs, picking up trash, and just generally being the kind of Christian that wanted to do whatever it took to work for the Kingdom right then and there. Mark Hatfield, in that moment, was not the great Senator from Oregon, he was a worker in the kingdom of God. As Hendricks put it himself, “if you are impressed that, really, you are the greatest thing that ever happened to your local church, you do not serve. You live to be served.”

That’s the greatest part of this that I hope you will take away today: when we say that we are the church, we have the opportunity to show that to others in our world. Christ is our cornerstone, the stone in which everything that we have had or ever will be will be set upon. And we will have the ability to serve others. Next week, we’ll finish up this little couplet with a call to work. But today, I hope that you will take heed that we are the church, and we are here to come together and work as one body. Let’s pray.