From Hostilities to Dwelling Place For God

LaRue Baptist Church, OH

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Please stand in honor of God's Word. The Old Testament reading this morning is in Psalm 118 verses 19 through 29.

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If you'd like to read along, that's page 511 in your few Bibles. Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the

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Lord. This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous shall enter it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

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The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the

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Lord's doing. It is a marvelous thing in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made.

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Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Save us, we pray, O Lord. O Lord, we pray, give us success.

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Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is

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God and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords up to the horns of the altar.

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You are my God and I will give thanks to you. You are my God. I will extol you. O give thanks to the

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Lord for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. New Testament reading today is in 1

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Corinthians. It will be chapter 3. But our brothers could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

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I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready yet.

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For you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, and you are not of the flesh and behaving only in human way.

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For when one says, I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human?

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What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the

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Lord assigned to each. I planted Apollos, watered, but God gave him the growth. So either he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only

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God who gives him the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.

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For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder,

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I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it.

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For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

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Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it, because will be revealed by fire.

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And the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

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If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss. Through he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

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Do you not know that you are God's temple, and that God's spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys

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God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. Let no one deceive himself.

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If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in his age, let him become a fool, that he may become wise.

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For the wisdom of this world is folly with God, for it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness.

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And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of wise that are the futile. So let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future, all are yours, and the

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Christ and Christ of these gods. You may be seated. Well, thank you for your singing.

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I'd ask you to open to Ephesians chapter 2, please. Ephesians chapter 2.

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As we make our way through a pretty major break in the book, although not the major break,

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I will read and then we'll go to the Lord in prayer. Ephesians 2 will focus today on 19 to 22, but we'll read for the sake of context 11 to 22.

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So Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11. Therefore remember that at one time you

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Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.

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Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

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But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

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For Christ himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so therefore making peace that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross thereby killing the hostility.

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He came and he preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

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For through him we both Jew and Gentile have access in one spirit to the father.

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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,

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Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the

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Lord. In Christ you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit.

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Oh God in heaven help us this morning for we are needy people. Lord of ourselves we have nothing.

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We are nothing. All we have to bring to you is our sin. All we have to bring to you is our rebellion.

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All we have to bring to you is our far awayness of guilt and shame that causes us to hide as Adam our forefather has done.

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But Lord we are gathered. We're here because Jesus Christ has came and he is the perfect man taken on flesh as true

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God. He fulfilled the law perfectly in our stead and because of his righteousness and him dying on the cross that sacrificial death that redemptive work on the cross we can look to the cross.

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We can look to Jesus and claim unity with you through him. But Lord I'm thankful not only can we be reconciled to you, not only can

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I be reconciled to you because of the work of Jesus, but my brothers and sisters before me.

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Despite the fact that we might disagree with certain aspects, despite the fact that sometimes we let flesh get in the way, there is an objective reality that I have my brothers and sisters in Christ before me that because we are all reconciled to you we can be reconciled with one another.

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Without giving my whole sermon away and my prayer here Lord I just want to thank you for the fact that salvation isn't just an individual affair but it is a corporate, a church, a bride, a collective unit that we can celebrate even now.

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So Lord I ask for the people before me. I know that there are many I'm sure who came ready and I'm thankful but I know that there's also probably many who are not ready.

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They're distracted. They're looking at other things. So I pray God that you would bring your spirit to bear on every single one of us, on your people, and cause us to look to Jesus here, to look to Christ, to look at what would he have us think, what would he have us do as the bride, as the unity, as the unit, as the family of Christ.

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It may be our joy to live out this purpose we have in your word. I thank you and I praise you.

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In Jesus name, amen. Before coming to Christ I was the type of person who loved to hang out with people.

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I was the type of people that loved parties. I loved to have people come over to my house. I was very much a social bug.

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I guess that's how you can describe it. And it's a very fascinating thing in my own walk occurred that as I came to Christ I've noticed that more and more

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I've become more tempted to be a recluse. Without thinking biblically, without thinking, without being challenged by where we're at right now at Ephesians, I just would love the idea of spending all day in my study celebrating the all spiritual blessings that I have won in Jesus.

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And then just do it all night maybe reading John Calvin or Herman Witsius or some other Puritan.

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That would be my kind of night and day. It would be wonderful. But I'm so thankful that here we have a full -bodied understanding of salvation.

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And if you remember in Ephesians 1 we celebrated the spiritual blessings we have in Christ, right?

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All the spiritual blessings we can have in Christ to be together with the Father. And we saw that in Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 10.

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We saw that individually of you were once dead in your sins, that was your life, but thanks be to Christ, to God, he made you alive with Jesus.

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And really it was a focusing on an individual affair. But we see in chapter 2 it has to stop there, has it?

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That in order to understand your salvation more completely you have to go from the individual to yourself to the whole corporate reality of what

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Jesus is doing in creation. In fact, if when you think of salvation you only think of your own individual self and you're not thinking corporately of the people around you, you are not thinking fully of salvation and you're losing out on the glory that Jesus is revealing in that.

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And so I'm thankful for verses like this because for some reason in my Christianity I love to grab hold of individualism, stay in my library, and just read and enjoy theology, enjoy the spiritual blessings

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I have in Christ, and just really meditate on it. But here we see salvation is an overarching corporate affair.

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It is a togetherness with one another. We cannot be isolated, we cannot be individuals.

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And why that is so important for us to meditate on here is because we are Americans. We don't need each other.

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I just need Walmart and I can literally just survive in my own house, with my own entertainment, with my own TV, go to Walmart, quickly come back, and live like a ghost.

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And I can survive that way. That's a new thing in human society by the way. It's a curse that we can do stuff like that.

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But that's not the total point here. The point is as Americans we can very quickly, very easily, individuals.

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Individualism. It's all about just individuals. It's my salvation. If you hear the talk of Christians today, it's very, very individual.

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And I would challenge you that perhaps as you consider salvation yourself, perhaps you consider it in a very individual way.

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Paul doesn't allow that. We've been talking a lot about with 11 through 22

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Ephesians 2. It's not just an individual affair, but Jesus has brought individuals together to be something.

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Now, it's a very fascinating thing, you know, and we should celebrate.

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And I want to go further now with these last few verses. We celebrated the fact that Jesus has caused two individuals,

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Gentiles and Jews, and in our own context, individuals to stop their hostility, right?

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And praise God for that, right? The fact that Jesus can stop hostilities, that is worthy to be admired.

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I mean, look at what's going on in Gaza and Hamas and Israel with the

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Israelites. Imagine something going to be able to go in there and just stop hostilities. That would be impressive.

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Imagine if Biden, our President Biden, could go there and stop the hostilities. He would be worthy of a

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Nobel Peace Prize. And so that's an amazing thing of itself.

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And so Jesus came and he stops hostility. But what I want to press upon you is Jesus is doing more than just simply seizing hostility with one another to where you can come to church and say, well, you know,

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Jesus is really performing that work in me because I get along pretty much with other people. I don't fight with them. We don't argue.

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And so this, the hostility has ceased with my brothers and sisters here in this church. So looking pretty good.

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Let me, let me press you a little further here. And I think this is the, the focus of these verses is that not only is

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Jesus stopping hostilities, but he causes these people who were once hostile for one another to come together in peace and actually produce something.

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Now to, you get the extra step there. Imagine stopping the hostilities between Hamas and Israel.

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That would be a feat. But now imagine having them come together to produce something together, perhaps be a nation in unity and producing with one another.

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That's, that's beyond fathomable. The most we can hope for is that they've just stopped killing each other, but to actually come together and produce and actually be building something, that is of a whole nother level.

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And so we see here that Jesus not only has ceased hostility between the two different members of his church, whether it's

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Jew and Gentile, whether it's country folk or city folk, whether it's white, black, whatever it may be, not only does he cease hostility, but he actually has them come together and produce something in his church.

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And so this is the focus of what we're going to see this afternoon or this morning. And so this is what he says in verse 19 in Ephesians 2.

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He says, so then, because of Christ, because of what he's done with his death, with his resurrection, because of his work, you are, in aliens.

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Remember what we talked about, Gentiles were strangers and aliens from the nation of Israel. And because Jesus Christ has came, now

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Jew and Gentile are together. There is no such thing as a Gentile people separated from the covenant community, because Jesus has came and he's brought unity in his covenant.

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And so as Gentiles, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but then he's going to use three pictures for us to give us a good image of what

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Jesus has done. He uses a nation imagery, he uses a household imagery, and he uses a temple imagery.

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And first he starts off with that nation imagery. He says, but instead you are fellow citizens with the saints.

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There's that nationhood imagery that we are the people, despite being at one time

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Gentiles and separated from the old covenant community, we are the people who have saw, have seen where we were nationwide, so to speak, and we have fled to Christ and his nationhood.

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There is something that happens. We can, you know, with this nation imagery, whenever going back even to what's going on between Hamas and Israel, people by and large, as far as I'm concerned, in Gaza, they were pretty happy with being citizens there.

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But now all of a sudden, now that there's turmoil going on, now that there's destruction there, they are trying to get out and leave that nation.

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And what Jesus has done is he's awakened the people to see that the nationhood that we were part of, and what was that?

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I'm not talking about American, I'm not talking about actual, I'm talking about the fact that we were at one time under the prince of the power of the air,

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Satan himself, that was our nation. And what Jesus does is he awakens us to the danger that's involved.

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He's awakened us to the destruction that comes being part of that citizenship. And he has caused us to say,

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I'm going to new nation, I'm going to the nationhood of Jesus, I'm going to be a citizen of him.

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And there's nothing that will cause us to do that more than to make us awaken to the understanding that there's destruction coming to those who are part of this nationhood.

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And it reminds me of Pilgrim's Progress when Christian, he says one of the things that got him to leave the city of destruction to be citizens of that, of that town, and to leave and join up with Christ in that pilgrimage, is that Moses came and started yelling,

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I'm going to burn down your house, I'm going to destroy everything. And it caused, okay, I'm getting out of here.

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And that's representative of the fact that the law of God was beating down on the pilgrim, and he realized,

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I am in danger where I'm at now, I need to go to the nation of Jesus Christ.

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And we've seen how the law separated, but Jesus came and fulfilled the law. And so we recognize that we have broken the law, we are separated from God, but because Jesus has came and fulfilled, we are welcomed into his country, into his nation as citizens of the king.

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And so we go, we are now fellow citizens with, he says, the saints.

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Notice he doesn't say with Israel. Notice he says, you are fellow citizens with the saints.

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Israel as a covenant community no longer exists, but rather Jesus Christ has came and fulfilled that, and now we are fellow citizens with the church, with the saints, with the body of Christ.

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And so we are looking for a citizenship that's under Christ, with the renewed Israel, with Christ himself.

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And that is that, again, that nation imagery of that, of what

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Christ has done to bring about unity with people. He's made us fellow citizens with the saints, but then he gets more intimate, and he gets more intimate with, which is a good picture for how we should be as members in his nation.

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He says, and you are members of the household, I'm sorry, but you are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

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Notice the imagery goes from nation to something a little bit more intimate, doesn't it? A household. You can not know the members of your nation pretty easily, right?

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They can be, you know, you can be unified to a certain sense, but they're separated from you. But here we have this imagery of a household.

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If you are alienated from the people within your own household, there's something wrong there, right? There's something seriously wrong.

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And so notice the intimacy of household language here. It's a more intimate analogy.

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He says, we are members of the household of God. And one thing I want to press upon you is, since we're members of the household of God, this is what we are as the

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Christian community. We are to take care of one another. We are to have a unified purpose to produce caring for one another, to help each other grow.

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We are to invest in one another. We are to produce, not just a season of hostility, but actually caring for one another to produce something for one another.

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We are part of the household of God. You remember what Paul says to Timothy in 1

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Timothy 5 .8? Remember what he says about someone who doesn't take care of those of his household?

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Remember what he says? Those who don't take care of members of their own household, they're worse than an unbeliever. You know what he means by that is, even the unbeliever knows that you got to take care of people within your own household.

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You know, there's a natural revelation coming from God that even the unbeliever knows that it is a deeply wicked thing to not take care of people within your own intimate setting of your household.

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And if you have no desire to do that, there is something that's just wrong with you that's beyond the depravity of a pagan, right?

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And so here's this language saying that we as the people of God, we're not just not hostile with one another.

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We're not just, okay, well, we don't argue, so we're fine. No, we are part of the household. That's an intimate setting. We take care of one another.

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We are producing a caring for one another that produces something of value more than just simply we're not fighting.

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It kind of reminded me my mind is on babies right now, as you might be able to imagine having

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Micah home, who's two weeks old now. And I was just thinking about this text and thinking about the household and thinking about bringing

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Micah home to our household. And I was thinking, it's not like in our mind as we're anticipating having a baby, it's not like we're saying, we'll see.

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We'll see if we like him enough to keep him and take care of him. You know, we'll see if he kind of fits, you know, we kind of get along with each other or whatever.

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There's no nothing of that, right? We're going to take care of this baby. I don't care how much he may or may not cry, right?

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We're going to take care of this one. We're going to nurture this one. We're as a family, and this is what we're pressing upon the older siblings.

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You are to take care of your brother. You are to nurture them. You are to bring them up in the admonition of the

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Lord. You are to take care of them. And this is what we do as infants come in.

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They take a lot of time and nurturing, but the hope is that they would grow up in the household and become producers.

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And it's the same thing with the church of Christ, right? People come in as new believers, and we are to treat them as infants.

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We are to take care of them. We are to look into them. We are to make sure they're being nurtured so that they can then grow up in the

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Lord and do so for others. But our mind frame is that if they are part of the household of God, they will be taken care of.

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We will provide for them. Another analogy I thought of is we have chickens on our homestead, if I may call it that, and we have a hen that went broody.

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If you're not familiar, I think I've already mentioned this behind the pulpit, I probably think of chickens way too much. But a broody hen is a hen that just something happens in their brain where they're like,

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I need to sit on eggs forever. And they just want to take care of eggs. And what they do is they'll sit on it, and then once they hatch, they just have a motherly instinct to take care of these chicks.

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When they don't go broody, they don't care anything about eggs. They don't care about sitting on them. They just want to leave it alone, right? But when they go broody, they just, they want to take care of them eggs.

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They want to take care of them chicks. That's what, and I'm just excited about it. It's fun to watch it. And what I find interesting is the hen doesn't care what eggs they take care of.

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So like I was watching it on one set of eggs in the nesting. I'm like, oh cool, we'll see in a few weeks. We'll get chicks out of that.

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But then all of a sudden I just went to another nesting. And then I went to, I was like, what's wrong with you? It has no identity with the eggs itself.

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It just needs to be sitting on some, needs to be taking care of certain eggs. So what I did is I put the hen in a separate coop alone, isolated, and I just put eggs under her.

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I don't think any of them were her eggs, but she doesn't care. She took care of them. In fact, some of them were white eggs. She doesn't produce white eggs.

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She had to have known this one's definitely not mine. She doesn't care. She took care of all of them.

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When the chicks came out, it was very clear that I don't think any of them are hers, but doesn't matter to her.

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She takes care of them and she fights for them. She protects them. She nurtures them. It's a really cool thing to see.

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But I'm connecting it with what we're saying here is that this hen takes care of her household.

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She takes care of her own. She doesn't ask any questions. She's going to nurture them.

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She's going to build them up. And this is the kind of imagery that's helpful for us as Christians.

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We are not just isolated Christians. We are a community of believers in which we take care of one another.

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We take care of one another. Jesus has created a household of saints in which we take care of each other.

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Now, what do I mean by take care of each other? And it can mean all sorts of physical realities, right?

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If we're in some situation where we lost our job, we don't have much money, we don't have much food, we're going to take care of them, right?

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If our house burns down, the church ought to be the first ones to come and help with whatever it looks like to get shelter again.

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So there's certainly that physical reality there. But I think what Paul is getting at when it comes to this household imagery is that we take care of each other for a common goal that is what he's going to be referring to as spiritual.

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So keeping in mind that the definition of taking care of each other, in fact, I'll just mention it here and we'll get to in a few minutes.

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Look at verse 21, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the

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Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the

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Spirit. Notice that it's happening now. Notice that we are growing now. The desire as a

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Christian is that I want to grow into a faithful and mature Christian.

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I want to grow after the doctrines of Christ. I want to grow my love for the Lord. I want to be the dwelling place of Christ right here and let sin vanquish, be vanquished and gone from me.

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And so I think taking care of each other, primarily spiritually, is talking about we help each other look more like Jesus who is,

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I'm jumping ahead, our cornerstone. This is what it means to take care of one another. It doesn't mean all the physical stuff is thrown out the window, but it means our greatest aim is we want one another to look like Jesus.

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That's what we want to happen. That's what it means to take care of the household of God. And we see that, you know, so far in these verses we very much talked about inclusivity, being inclusive, because that's what

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Jesus has done, right? It's no longer just Israel, the bloodline, but now it's Jew and Israel, right?

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Or Jew and Gentile. And there's an inclusivity of it. We talk about how this is how we bring people unto the fold as we preach, where we proclaim the word.

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And we don't sit there and say, well, are you a bloodline of Israel? Or are you white? Or are you black? Or no, we don't do that.

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We are very inclusive. We give it to everyone and we just, whatever, this is probably, whatever eggs

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God gives us, we take care of, right? This is the inclusivity of the gospel.

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But that doesn't mean that the gospel is inclusive. In fact, the gospel is very exclusive.

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It's very much, it's very much one way. It's very much one vision.

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And we see that in verse 20. We see that it's built on something. We don't just say, welcome all, whoever you are, whatever you think, whatever you are doing with your life, it doesn't matter.

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Come on in. You're part of our household and you're going to be members and we're going to love it. That's not how we should operate.

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Although we proclaim to all, we don't accept just anyone into the membership of the fold because it's very exclusive.

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Look at what he says in verse 20. It is built on something. Not just whatever goes, like in our world today, it's just however

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I'm feeling, whatever, just don't judge me. No, no, no. It's actually very exclusive. It says in verse 20, it's built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

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Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. So again, we preach

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Christ. We preach Christ as the only way. There is no other way.

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There is no other foundation. Anything else is sinking sand. And we're not ashamed of that. No matter how much the world tries saying that we should be, we are not.

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Because we realize that there is no way to God the Father, but through the one foundation of Jesus Christ.

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He is what Paul says, the cornerstone. Now the cornerstone, it's most likely referring to the fact that you have even a foundation, it has its centerpiece on a corner where everything kind of has its load or weight on that one part.

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And so all the weight, all the weight that is placed, it's all centered on the one who can bear it, the one that it's all supposed to go to, and that is

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Jesus Christ. And if the weight of the building goes on anything else, that building is going to fall.

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And we see that there's many times in history where people try to put the weight on other things, other foundations, whether it's very bad heretical teaching, a different gospel, or some kind of humanistic or secularism, this is our hope for the future, those things will crumble.

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But Jesus will not. His foundation is sure, it's true, it will last. And so it's a very exclusive gospel.

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We call on people not to be who they are and just whoever you are, that's fine. No, we say you must repent and believe upon the cornerstone, upon Jesus Christ.

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It says in verse 20, it says it's the foundation of the apostles and prophets. That's not saying it's a different foundation than the

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Jesus Christ being the cornerstone. It just simply says the apostles and the prophets, they're the one that kind of fully completed or fully realized that foundation that Jesus had laid.

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The apostles and prophets, it can be tempting to think of the prophets as the

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Old Testament books of the Bible and the apostles as the New Testament, but it seems like what Paul is referring to here is the apostles and prophets of this new covenant era.

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If you see in, oh

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I'm forgetting where it's at now, chapter 4, chapter 3 verse 4, yes verse 5.

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So look at chapter 3 verse 4 and 5. When you read this, Paul says, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations in the

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Old Testament, but as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the

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Spirit, i .e. in now the New Testament. And so he's, and he says that he uses the same apostles and prophets in chapter 4 as well, and so it seems very clear what he's referring to here is he's talking about the apostles and prophets are those

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New Testament saints, those first century Christians that were kind of bringing forth the teachings of Jesus into the full canon of scripture.

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This is the foundation laid. It's Jesus Christ's cornerstone. He says in 1 Corinthians 3 that we've already read, there is no other foundation than Jesus.

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There is no other foundation, and it's Christ. It's exclusive. We call people to him in order to be built up together with us, in order for them to be part of our household of faith, part of our nationhood.

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It must be on this one foundation, because if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart upon Jesus, you will be saved.

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But you see, what is the teaching of Jesus? What is the teaching of Jesus? Now, of course,

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Jesus is the cornerstone, and his name is worthy and mighty, but what does that look like? Well, it looks like the fact that Jesus came and he preached, as we talked about last week, a very two weeks ago,

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I can't remember, I think it was last week, a very particular message, right? That is of one of that we are lawbreakers, that the very summation of the law of God is to love

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God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

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This is the very law of God that we are to exhibit, but the fact is we are lawbreakers.

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In fact, given to our own devices, we constantly go against God. We do not love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.

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We do not love our neighbor as ourself. Instead, we are neighbor haters, but we see that Jesus has come and he, where we have failed, he is the perfect embodiment of the law.

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He never failed once at loving God perfectly well. He never failed once at loving his neighbor perfectly well, to where so when we look upon ourselves and we see our sins, our fallenness, our brokenness, our destitution, our everything, our lack of unity with the

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Father, Jesus came and he showcased it perfectly well. But it wasn't just that he could do that and be like, ha ha,

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I can do it, you can't. Jesus took on the cross despite the fact he didn't deserve it because it's by that great sacrificial work you can be saved, you can gain his righteousness, and he gains your sin so that you can be found to be united with the

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Father instead of separated with him, so that you can be law keepers instead of lawbreakers, so that it would be written on your heart that I have a desire because of the mercies and grace found in Jesus to obey him, to love

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God with all my heart, to love my neighbor as myself.

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And so this is what it means for Jesus to be the cornerstone, is that if you don't have Jesus, you don't have law keeping.

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You are a sinner, that's it, period. But with Jesus, you are a law keeper because of his mercies and grace.

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He makes you stand right before the Father, and then he makes you practice right before the

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Father, so that if you are not standing right before the Father, if you are a sinner before the eyes of God, you must repent and look upon Jesus and gain his righteousness.

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And for you who have a standing of righteousness before the Father, praise be to God. And whenever you find yourself in sin, what of your sins, continue that great lifestyle of looking to Jesus, and he will give you new desires, new strength.

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He will give you practical righteousness. Here's why I'm making a point to say this, because as we move on, we see that we're built on this very foundational gospel truth.

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So if you're not confessing Jesus, you are not part of the household of God. You are not part of that foundational work being built up.

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There is no hope for you because you are still separated in your sins. And so that's why in verse 21, when he says in whom, in this foundation, in this cornerstone, the whole structure, now look at that, he's going from from a nation to household to now a building analogy, the whole structure is being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the

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Lord. That's what's going on. Whenever someone confesses their sins and believes upon Jesus, they're like a brick that's added to the temple.

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Whenever a member comes into our fold, they are a brick added to that great temple, that great edifice of Christ.

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That is why I celebrate it so much. The temple is being built more and more. As someone confesses

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Christ as Savior, as someone says, I'm no longer living in my sins for myself, for my sins, for the flesh, for the devil.

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I now am living for the King. They are then being added to that great temple work that God is doing.

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And we talked about the whole, you want to know the theme of scripture. You want to know what's going on.

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There's a lot of pages here, right? As a new believer, especially if you're a new believer, it can be very much overwhelming. And so it's really helpful to know these major themes that God is doing that we can then pluck these books of the

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Bible under. And one of the major things that God is doing is He is trying, or He's trying,

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He is making a temple, a dwelling place, a place where He resides on earth.

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That is what He's always longed to do. He has made a physical reality of creation.

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He has a spiritual reality of the heavenlies where He dwells. And His desire is that they would come all together beautifully.

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And so we see here that is happening in the fact that Jesus Christ is that cornerstone of that temple, but it's not a physical temple, right?

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But it's a greater spiritual reality where we make up individual temples, but together the temple of God.

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In 1 Corinthians 3, if you notice, Paul's really focused on the individual. You are the individual temple of God.

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Praise be to God. But we see here, but we are coming together in verse 21, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple of the

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Lord. So we cannot think in isolation. We cannot think of being separate from one another.

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No, because we are supposed to be knitted together to be the very temple of Christ Himself. But again, that doesn't happen unless someone proclaims

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Jesus the cornerstone. If someone proclaims Christ as Lord and King, as Savior, as Redeemer, as the cornerstone of everything.

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This is why whenever someone comes to be a member at the church, right, we don't ask them if they are a

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Republican or a Democrat or how much money they have given. We don't ask them what are their views on Calvinism and or all these sorts of matters that are maybe that are important, but what is the main thrust of what we ask?

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Do you know the cornerstone? And have you declared, I no longer am living for the flesh, but I'm living for the

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King of the earth, of the heavens. This is Jesus, my Savior. Without that confession, there is no household.

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There is no temple. He is the cornerstone. But again, we are working together.

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In verse 22, I think as an application, maybe an implication, it's an outgrowth of what it means to be the temple.

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In verse 22, he says, in Him, again in Jesus, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the

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Spirit. So you see, this is what God has been doing in the church for thousands of years and what

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He'll continue to do until He returns, is He's building up the dwelling place of God.

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That here at LaRue Baptist Church, we would, people would know us as the dwelling place of God.

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God is there. He is there. Now, how do they know He is there? Because they proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.

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And not only that, but this is a, this is an ongoing reality. Not only do they proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, but they live like Jesus Christ is

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Lord. That when you're there, you feel you are around the presence of God Himself.

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And beloved, you know that's going to offend a lot of people. And they're going to make up all sorts of reasons why they don't want to be around.

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But really, if they knew, if they weren't so ignorant, if they weren't following the Prince of the Power of the Air, who loves ignorance, they would know,

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I don't want to be there because God dwells there. Righteousness dwells there. They're serious about righteousness.

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They don't wink an eye at it. And this is really the practical, right? Not only are we, do we stand righteous before God because of Jesus, but we, because of that great reality, we practice righteousness.

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And so therefore, the dwelling place of God is with us. We got to understand that the dwelling place of God isn't just simply confessing, isn't simply saying, yes,

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I'm a believer. But it's when that confession then transforms our practice into, and I live like a believer.

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And part of that living like a believer and the already not yet is I confess my sins over and over again.

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When I see this is not in keeping with being the dwelling place of God, I say, Lord, forgive me for that.

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I ask forgiveness for my wife, forgiveness for my husband, forgiveness for my children, forgiveness from the fellow members in the church.

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You see, this is how righteousness dwells with us is that we consistently confess our sins to the cornerstone, to the one who can do away, who does away with our sin.

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And so I think this is why we are at a major break of the book, because the whole argument of salvation has culminated up to this point right here, that not only the spiritual blessings in Christ is yours individually, but then collectively it becomes yours as you are knitted together to make the total temple of the

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Lord, which is the dwelling place of God, which is righteousness. Not only standing righteousness in Jesus, but practical righteousness.

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And we see it all culminating right here, finishing with verse 22. Chapter 3 then refers back to it.

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What does it mean that Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles in light of the fact that all these members, this separate

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Gentile Jew, all these things are coming together to be the temple of God. And then four, five, and six is all about what does it mean to live practically righteous because of this great work of Jesus here.

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What does it mean then as a church we are to be a dwelling place for God, a righteous practice kind of people.

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What does that look like? It's all connected with this fact that we are members of one another, the new man in Christ.

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And so as you read in your own time, read through the rest of the book, but let that be dominant in your mind that we are the dwelling place of God collectively together.

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We're members of one another, therefore we are to love one another, we are to serve one another, and it looks like this. And this has all sorts of implications as we see in Ephesians when it comes to your families.

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You're going to treat your family, right, especially as I believe in husband and wife, you're going to treat them as a fellow member in the body of Christ.

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And that has implications in the way that you live. It has to because Jesus Christ, this is a reality that he's established in his righteousness, and it has to have implications in the way we live.

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And so going back, it's a corporate affair, this salvation of Christ.

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We cannot buy into the lie of culture that we can just be our own isolated islands, that salvation is just a private affair.

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Because if you think this way, if you practice this way, then you will kind of cut the full realities of salvation.

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We have to be people in which, ask yourself, it's not enough that I would just come into church and say, well,

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I don't argue with people, right? There's no hostilities. But in your mind and heart, are you proactively seeing this is what

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Christ has done? We're the dwelling place of God. Together, we act the righteousness of the

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Lord because of the standing righteousness. In your mind, does that draw you to say, and I want to invest in people,

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I want to take care of people, I want to help them along in their faith. What can I do with my own particular gifts and calling in order to make this happen?

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It's not going to look the same for every single individual. But if it's not even on your mind that this is what Jesus Christ has done, so therefore this is what

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I'm to do, then you're not ever going to grow. And so this full understanding of salvation is deeply corporate.

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It deeply affects the people around you right now to have a love for them, to take care of them as a household of God, and to serve that purpose, to grow after that image of Jesus, to be the dwelling place of God here on this earth.

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And I hope that as you see, and I say this often, but this is what I had to tell myself as I look at the news, as I look at how dark the world is.

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Beloved, you do know that Christ is king. It's not like he's like, I wish I could do something about this.

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He purposely allows the darkness of the earth so that the dwelling place of God can shine, the light can shine all the more in our communities and around the world.

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This is our time. This is our moment. Let's stop bemoaning the fact that the western world has went the way it has back in the good old days.

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It used to not be like this. No, this is an opportunity for us to say as the people of God, as people who

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Christ has saved, I shall display the light of Christ. The dwelling place of God will be there and it cannot be denied by anyone around.

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Let us pray. Oh God in heaven, thank you

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Lord that not only have you saved individuals, but you have brought us together to knit us together in love so that together, corporately, we would be the dwelling place of God.

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We know that all of the Bible, all of human history is pointing to the fact that one day in the end you will say the dwelling place of God, of man has become, the dwelling place of God has now come down to be with men.

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And Lord, the fact that we can taste of that final reality today because of the work of Jesus, what a blessing that is for one another.

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Lord, help us to think this way when we're considering salvation, to serve one another's salvation, to serve one another the righteousness of Jesus, to help the ones who are new come in like an infant, like a chick, to take care of them, to have a desire to serve them so that they can grow and mature in righteousness and be trained in righteousness so that they can then serve one another as well so that we have this beautiful thing happening in the body of Christ.

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I pray that you would place this on the people before me, on their minds. It can be so easy to just get involved with our own lives and our own individual affairs that we don't even think corporately.

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We don't think that not only have you stopped hostilities between one of us, each other, but you've actually enabled us to produce the temple of God or produce a dwelling place of God or produce the righteousness of Jesus together.

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We know, Lord, that's only because of his great work on the cross. And so we must remind ourselves of that great reality every day.

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Each time we come together, let us have that great worship that Jesus Christ gave himself for us so that we can gain his righteousness and live as lights to this world.

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I thank you that this is what we have looking forward in Ephesians. This is exciting. This is good.

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It transforms our lives. We don't live ineffectual lives, but instead we live exciting lives for the sake of Jesus together as a covenant community.

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So let us all have this mindset as we look to your word, as we look to Jesus, as we practice the righteousness that he's enabled.

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Let us do it as the temple, the people, the bride of Christ. In Jesus' name, amen.