The Dearest Place on Earth - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa

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Charles Spurgeon, a Baptist forefather of ours, once said that despite the church's imperfections, that it was in fact the dearest place on earth.

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And the reason that he said this was because he believed, much like the Apostle Paul, that the church is not just something that exists on the periphery of life, but it is plan

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A for the redemption and the sanctification of God's people.

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The church is what the entire book of Ephesians is about. And I know it's taken us a while to get to that reality, but Paul is trying to argue that the church has to be made up of people who know and love the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, we have seen throughout this book that there is many obstacles to that reality.

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We need the church. We must love the church, but in order for the church to exist and to move forward in the world, dead sinners have to be made alive, and people who are alienated from one another, both ethnically and geographically, must be united and reconciled to one another.

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And they're not reconciled and united in their ethnicity or their religious practice, but in Jesus Christ himself.

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But friends, the church is of utmost importance in Paul's argumentation.

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It is the reason that he has talked about what Christ has done for the sinner in eternity past, what the

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Father has done and what the Spirit has done and how he has stepped in the way to overcome these obstacles, utilizing his divine power.

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And though the church has not been explicitly mentioned except for once in chapter one, at the end in verse 21, it is now being talked about in verses 19 through 22.

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Tucked in these lines of Scripture are three great biblical images or metaphors for the church and how it is to function.

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There are three life -altering metaphors here that we must pay attention to.

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They are the implications of having been saved. And so if we to understand what the church is, we need to understand what these metaphors are.

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The first metaphor is that we are fellow citizens of God's heavenly kingdom. We can see that as we look at our passage in verse 19 as well as family members of God's household and then continuing on, stones in God's holy sanctuary.

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And in order for us to understand that, we have to look back and lean forward. Paul here is essentially summing up what he's already talked about and then he's going to give us a glimpse as to where he's going.

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And so let's see what it is that he has to say. Would you please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and all -sufficient word.

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And as I said, when we began our time, we will look specifically at verses 19 through 22, but so that we can be caught up in Paul's flow of argumentation, let me begin in verse 11 of chapter two.

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This is the word of God. Therefore, remember that formerly you, the

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Gentiles in the flesh who are called uncircumcision by the so -called circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands, remember that you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the citizenship 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 formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace who made both groups one and broke down the dividing wall of the partition by abolishing in his flesh the enmity, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in himself, he might create the two into one new man, making peace and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having in himself put to death the enmity.

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And he, that is Jesus, came and preached the good news of peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.

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For through him, we both have our access in one spirit to the father.

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So then, you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household.

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Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, and whom the whole building being joined together is growing into a holy sanctuary in the

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Lord, and whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the spirit.

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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen? Amen, go ahead and have a seat.

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Our verse begins, or our passage rather, begins in verse 19, when

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Paul essentially begins to sum up everything that he has just said. He begins by saying, so then, or you could say, because, and what he's getting at is, because of these spiritual realities that I have just talked about, namely that God has, according to chapter two, verse one, caused the dead in spiritual realities to be born again, because he has enabled them to not walk according to the world, not according to the devil, and not according to their own fleshly desires, and because he has made them one new man with the people who were far away, namely the

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Jewish people, these things are true. And remember, Paul is speaking to a

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Gentile audience. If you are new here, or you haven't been following along with us, that just means anybody who is not born a

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Jew, not born one of God's chosen people at the time of the

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Old Testament. And it's because God has done all of this that we can be assured of the realities that he has just told us about, namely that we are no longer strangers, and we are no longer sojourners.

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Paul finds it incredibly important here to discuss the reality yet again that we who were far off from God's covenant people, were far off from the covenants of promise, were far off and without God in the world, have now been brought near.

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We just read it in verse 11 and following that as part of this problem, this obstacle, we were alienated from Israel.

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We were strangers to everything that was about them. We didn't have access to God, and we were wandering without God in the world.

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So he begins by asserting on the front end here that we are no longer something that we once were.

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We were without hope, but now we have hope.

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No, but not only is he speaking in terms of negation, he's going to give us three positive metaphors as I said at the beginning of our sermon.

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One, he's going to say that we are essentially the church, but he does so firstly by showing us this, that those who are now in Christ are fellow citizens of God's heavenly kingdom.

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That is a new kingdom with a new king, with new covenant stipulations, and that changes everything.

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But you are, verse 19, fellow citizens with the saints.

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What Paul wants his readers to understand and you to understand by extension is that you are caught up now, as it were, not just into salvation, but a kingdom that is much bigger than your own thought process, desires, and way of doing things.

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You are brought into a kingdom with other people in it that looks like the kingdom of Israel, but it's not the kingdom of Israel.

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And so when we look back at the Old Testament, when Paul is looking at the people of Israel, he's looking at a type and a shadow of things to come.

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It typifies the reality that New Testament believers are thrust into. This is why, for instance,

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Paul says elsewhere in Colossians chapter one, verse 13, that Jesus rescued us, those who believe in him and have faith in him, from the authority of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the son of his love.

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New Testament believers, those who have trusted in Christ, those who have been resurrected spiritually from spiritual death, have been brought into the kingdom of God's beloved son, where he reigns as king.

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Children, would you look at me for just a second? Did you know if you love

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Jesus, if you have bowed your knee to him in submission, you are not just saved, but you are in a kingdom surrounded by other people of the past, the present, and the future, and we'll get to that in a minute, that all make much of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And it's your job as kingdom ambassadors, that is someone who carries the king's message, to help push back darkness in the world and to show forth the beauties and glories of your king.

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You're gonna tell the world about this king and function in his kingdom.

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And this is true of all of us. We have been thrust into, and I will say, a heavenly kingdom.

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Remember, we have, if we're following the argumentation, we have been crucified with Christ, right?

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His power is aimed at us, and that power rose Jesus Christ from the dead. When we place our faith in him, we are caught up with him, as it were, to heaven, we are resurrected with him to a newness of life, and we now sit and rule and reign with him on the heavenly throne in him.

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And here, Paul is trying to get us to understand, that means that we're in a kingdom underneath a new king with who?

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The saints. That is, everyone who has been taken from death to life, everyone who has placed their faith in Jesus, who do not boast in their works, but boast in him and his salvation.

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And this, of course, is saints existing in the past, the present, and the future.

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This kingdom is bigger than Heritage Church. This kingdom is bigger than the state of Oklahoma.

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This kingdom is bigger than the United States. This kingdom is bigger than the world, because this kingdom originates in heaven.

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And we know this because Jesus teaches us to pray in Matthew chapter six, and in that prayer, he says, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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So Jesus' kingdom is where Jesus reigns. And of course,

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Jesus reigns over all of the world, so in one sense, the world is his kingdom, but Jesus sits on the throne and, what?

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Rules the minds and the hearts of his people as they push back darkness in the world and as they walk alongside one another carrying

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God's message. Now, when

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Paul wrote these words, the kingdom of Rome was at the height of its territorial expansion and glory.

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It was huge. Rome dominated the world and Roman armies kept peace and dispensed justice, so to speak.

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Roman roads linked the far flung reaches of the empire and Rome had stood for hundreds of years and was thought to be able to stand for thousands of years more.

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When people look at Rome, they saw a kingdom that could not be shaken. And so Paul, by saying, if you've been saved, if you love the

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Lord Jesus, you've been thrust into a kingdom with a king with all of the saints that exist bigger than your little spot here in Ephesus.

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They would have been like, what? Like Rome? No, bigger and better than Rome. A kingdom that was destined to grow and permeate all the nations and drawing all peoples from all groups.

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And it was the one. It was the kingdom that could not be destroyed.

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Friends, the truth of the scripture is that we have a king and we are in a kingdom that though it started out in the first century as a little mustard seed will grow to be one of the largest trees in the garden, it is a kingdom that is bigger than Heritage Church.

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It is a kingdom with all of the saints that have been saved throughout history and it is a kingdom that will continue to grow as God gathers his people.

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You might be asking, well, that's great. As a church, we function in this kingdom, but how can

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I be a good kingdom citizen, right? Because if you are going to be a kingdom citizen, if you're going to be in a kingdom, you must be a good kingdom citizen.

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Well, serving the kingdom firstly means serving the church because the church and the kingdom are somewhat synonymous as though they differ in nature in some ways, but that's not

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Paul's point here. Paul's point is that the church and those who in it are thrust in to kingdom work because they are a new kingdom people, fellow citizens with the saints.

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This means actively participating in building God's kingdom by investing in the relationships that exist in this church.

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God grows his kingdom by growing people together and as they move forward in the world.

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It means contributing your time and your worship resources to support ministry initiatives.

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And that's just a fancy way to say, use your time, talents, and treasures to make sure that Jesus' name and fame can exist in this world.

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Serve where you can serve, love where you can love, help where you can love, and make sure that you pray for the needs of others as you meet them.

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Look for ways to mentor and disciple fellow believers, making sure that you spur them on to good works, right?

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Because a kingdom, if you think about it, is like an army and an army must bear one another's burdens.

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They must look after one another. There is no army worth having where soldiers are not looking out for one another.

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If everybody only looked out for themselves, everyone would be dead. The church is so beautiful because we're thrust into a kingdom, we're thrust into having fellow kingdom workers, and those kingdom workers are there to work alongside you to labor and to love and to make much of Jesus.

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What a beautiful reality Paul is pointing to. But Paul doesn't just point to the reality that there are some people that work alongside us, which is the second thing that he begins to expand upon.

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He's building a case here. You're no longer something that you once were. You are no longer strangers and sojourners.

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You are no longer alienated from God, but you are in his kingdom firstly, and secondarily, you are in his family.

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So my second point here, this second metaphor that we are looking at is we are family members of God's household.

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He continues on, and are of God's household. Very plain, right there in the text.

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And this begins to unlock, as he's working towards his climax, a more intimate way of understanding the church, right?

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Because as you're walking along other soldiers, there may not be a lot of intimacy, though there might be a lot of co -laboring.

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But Paul says, no, it's bigger and better than that because you're actually thrust into God's family.

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So when you are saved, when you are brought from death to life because of the regenerating work of the

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Holy Spirit and the application of that truth that you have come to know about Jesus Christ in the preaching of his word, and as you are brought into the kingdom, you are also brought into a family, a family with a house.

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In other words, when people come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, they are coming home.

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They're coming home, right?

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Who needs a home? Those who are strangers and sojourners, those who are wandering, those who are dead in their trespasses and sins, those who need a family.

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And the church is God's family, made up of sons and daughters who have been redeemed by the blood of his

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Son. This is why in verse 16 of chapter two, it says that we have been reconciled in one body to God through the cross.

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And in chapter one of verse seven, we are reminded of the second member of the

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Trinity and the work that he did in redemption, that it was through his blood that we have been forgiven in the reconciling of work, in the reconciling work of Christ on the cross.

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We are brought into a family that is more family -like than even the familial bonds that we have with our own children or our aunts and our uncles or our moms and our dads, one that is not tethered to biological blood, but Christ's blood.

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And that binds us far more than any other blood because it does away with all of our alienation and all of our sin.

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So who is in this family? Well, we get into this family by being born again, that is being born of God or having been birthed from above.

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If you are to be in God's family, then you would have to have the

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Holy Spirit regenerating your heart. Now, this isn't a very popular doctrine, though it is one that we have most certainly discussed before, but it's not popular because what it tells us is that we can't actually make our own decisions because we're too sinful to do so.

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In chapter two of verse one, and I've already mentioned before, but let's look at it more in depth. It says, and you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

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What does it mean that we were dead in our transgressions and sins? Well, it means, according to the

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Greek, that you were dead in your transgressions and sins. There's no trick here.

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There's nothing underneath this. It means that we are unable to respond to spiritual stimuli.

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We are not alive, and we need to be made alive. And how do we do that? Not by choosing to follow

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God, because why? We're dead, and dead people don't choose. Dead people don't walk.

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Dead people don't breathe. Dead people, as the King James says, stinketh. That's all they have. And so if God is going to get for himself kingdom people and family members, he has to, according to Ephesians chapter one, predestine them to adoption and then cause them to be born again, to regenerate them, that is to awaken their dead hearts and to cause them to be red with blood for him.

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This is the promise of the new covenant, Jeremiah 31, 31 and following, is that God causes us to love him, obey him, because he loves us and wants to adopt us into his very family.

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This is why Jesus, addressing Nicodemus in John chapter three says, I say to you, unless one is born again as a child of God, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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So though this is second on Paul's list, it actually must happen prior to even seeing and being a part of the kingdom, because you can't see the kingdom unless you are made a child of God by being spiritually birthed.

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And if that's confusing to you, that's okay. It's confusing to Nicodemus. Nicodemus says, how is that work?

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I can't just go back up into my mother's womb and be born again. And what does

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Jesus say? Jesus says, you should know this.

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The spirit blows where he wishes and he does what he delights to do and he will do it.

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He says, unless one is born of water and of spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And that which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

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So whereas the Israelites were born into a kingdom and they were born into Israelite families, it was a fleshly, fleshly kingdom and a fleshly family, which was pointed out by their fleshly sign of circumcision.

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But in the new covenant, we are born of water and of spirit. And we are regenerated and brought into a new kingdom with a new covenant head, a new king, and born into God's family.

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In John chapter one, John makes this irrefutably clear when he says, but as many as received him to them, speaking of Jesus and those were hearing his preaching,

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Jesus gave them the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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So Paul is saying here, yes, as part of the church, you are fellow citizens of the saints, you are in a heavenly kingdom that surpasses all geographical boundaries and is coming and thrusting itself onto this earth from heaven.

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And you are of God's family and you have been born again to a living hope.

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And how does this happen? Well, Peter, where I just got that little last piece of what

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I was saying from, helps us to understand how that happens. And actually, Paul just told us how that happened last week.

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Namely, that Jesus Christ was preached and when he was preached, he was preaching to his people through the preaching of his word by the apostles.

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This is why 1 Peter 1 .23 says, for you have been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, that is through the living and enduring word of God.

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So how does God save a people and bring them to himself, thrust them into a kingdom and usher them into a family as it were?

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The preached word, the proclaimed word, the cherished word. That's why verse 17, just prior to what we have talked about today, it says, and he came and preached the good news of peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.

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And what's beautiful about this reality is that we are immediately connected in Christ with everyone he has called brethren, which is those whom he has saved.

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Children, would you look at me here for just a second? Not only are you brought into a kingdom when you believe in Jesus, but you are brought into a family, kind of like the family that you're already in, but with a heavenly father who is perfect in all ways and who loves you and is going to walk alongside you.

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And just like your dad helps you, he's going to help you and he's never going to leave you and he's never gonna forsake you and he's never gonna have to say sorry because he's always right and he's always helpful.

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But not only that, you actually get other brothers and sisters, much like the brothers and sisters that you have sitting next to you.

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If you believe in Jesus and you are in his family, all of these other people around you are your brothers and sisters as well.

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That's pretty cool, isn't it? So when you become a Christian, your family expands and you have people that you get to love and walk with and you get to walk with them and love them because they are in your family because we have all been brought underneath our heavenly father who is

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God because of Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross.

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Hebrews 2, 11 and 12 says for both he who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brothers.

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This is why oftentimes you will hear me say that Jesus Christ is our elder brother. He says

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I will recount your name to my brothers in the midst of the assembly. I will sing your praise.

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But Jesus being the son of God brings us into the family of God to be brothers and sisters with him.

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So the love and affection that the father shows upon Jesus for his atoning work he shows to you because you are in him.

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Now you're not Jesus so don't hear what I'm not saying. And you're not equal with Jesus but you are a part of God's family with Jesus Christ as your elder brother.

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Being a member of God's household brings so many privileges with it. I mean we could literally spend the next 40, 50, 60, 80 minutes talking about the privileges that rain down from being underneath God and his household.

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And this would have been huge in the first century, right? Because of the Roman Empire and how all of that worked.

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Children got all of these blessings and inheritance and we get so much inheritance having been in Christ and being his brother and being sons and daughters of God.

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But just to name a few, as it was already kind of stated to the children, we get a supportive network of spiritual brothers and sisters.

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Now this is why heritage in my estimation is so beautiful. Our body loves to love on one another.

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They love to take care of one another and they love to lean in when they see that a burden needs carried.

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That's the way a family should be. And that's the way a church family should be because we are all in the same family.

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We get to share in the oversight of fellowship and prayers in the church. We have access to the sacraments and the preached word and we are thrust into God's salvific plan for the world.

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But most importantly, above all of that, we have access to our father.

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See in a kingdom, it's not so easy to go talk to the king. In a kingdom, you may not get to ever see or talk to a king, though he influences and causes edicts to fall that you must follow in order to be a citizen in this kingdom, but a father, you can run to.

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This is why it's so important in verse 18 that Paul says that through him, we both have our access in one spirit to the father.

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We can come to this God in prayer at any moment of any day. Anytime we need him, we can come to him.

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We can request his help. The author of Romans says that we can come to the throne of grace with confidence because of our elder brother,

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Jesus Christ, the righteous. And he will bestow assurance upon us.

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He will receive us. He will answer us and he will shower down mercy and blessing according to his good pleasure and will.

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Do you guys feel that? The doctrine of God's adoption is so beautiful.

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The J .I. Packer once said, you want to know what a person thinks about being a Christian or whether or not he is a

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Christian, find out what he makes of being God's child. You see, every other religion in the world is how do we get to God, please

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God, or become God. But in Christianity, God is a father and leans in and lovingly adopts us into his family by absorbing the cost of that adoption, namely the death of his dear son.

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And because of that, we have unrestricted access to the comforter.

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And what this means practically, among other things, of course, is that we are in God's family.

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Now, I know that seems like redundancy, but I want you to understand that what I'm trying to communicate is that in God's family, there are many different people.

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So we have all access to God the Father and we all are very diverse in nature.

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In a kingdom, there must be to some degree some sort of marching orders, some sort of uniformity in order for that kingdom to function and to grow forth.

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But in a family, we love on one another because of the way that God has loved us despite our differences and idiosyncrasies.

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You and me and everyone else are very different. Now, we value different things, though we should first and foremostly value what the

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Scriptures tell us to value. But we have different gifts, we have different talents, we have different ways of communicating, and we are all the more beautiful for it.

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I want you to think about this reality that in a family, you have this diversity and yet unity and we love in relationship to that.

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It's kind of like an orchestra, right? When you go and sit down and you look at, or if you, and you listen to a symphony, as it were, you will notice that, for instance, the drum sounds much different than the clarinet.

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Now, the clarinet's beautiful in its own right and the drums are awesome in their own right, but they are completely different.

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They serve different purposes and individually, they're beautiful, but together, especially when you start adding the tuba and you start adding the saxophone, beautiful, harmonious music begins to appear.

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When I'm studying, I oftentimes will listen to movie soundtracks because they're so beautiful.

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And if a symphony or some sort of orchestral situation is really good, you can hardly tell what instruments are being played.

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You just know that it all works together and it sounds awesome. That's kind of what the church is.

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That's what a family is. You have all of these different voices and all of these different personalities and different forms and functions, and yet they all work together to produce this beautiful music.

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And that's the way family is, and that's the way this church is, and that's the way the church should be.

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And then once you begin to strip away all of that music, you realize that as beautiful as the drums and the clarinet are in this illustration, they're never what they could be by themselves.

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Just like a family is never what it could be without family members.

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A family without family members is just a person. So you might be asking yourself, well,

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I just feel like another face in the crowd. Maybe I'm not connecting with people in this church as I ought, or maybe

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I feel kind of isolated. You're saying that I'm a part of this family, I'm very important,

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I'm unique, I'm one of these instruments in a symphony. I'm one of Jesus Christ's brothers or sisters, but I feel like I'm on my own.

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To that, I would say, one, believe the gospel, but more than that, get, not that you need more than that, don't hear what

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I'm not saying, but in addition to believing the gospel, get involved in a fellowship.

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That's where family members fellowship with one another, or join us when we go out to do evangelism, although that is very kingdom -like work.

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Do your best to build close relationships with people who are in the family of God, especially here, but don't just stop here.

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Continue to reach out. There are other people from other churches who love

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Jesus, who are your brothers and sisters in Christ as well. Serve alongside them and share life experiences with them, and all of this can deepen your sense of connection to your true family within the church.

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Thirdly, Paul begins to tell us that not only are we in a kingdom because of what

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Christ has done, not only are we thrust into a family, but we are also stones in God's holy sanctuary, and this is,

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I believe, the climax of what Paul is attempting to say in all of chapters one and two.

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And you might be thinking, well, a stone is kind of backpedaling, right?

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A kingdom, that was really cool. A family seems to be a step down, and a stone kind of seems to be even less than a kingdom and a family, but actually, it's going up because intimacy is getting more robust.

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See, in an orchestra, you have different instruments, but they're still parsed out, as it were.

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They're still doing their own thing. It's just contributing to the whole, but now, with a stone structure, they're all perfectly fitted together.

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So what Paul is trying to do is to help us understand that the church, in all of these ways, is first and foremost unified under the banner of Christ.

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Now, let's look on. He continues in verse 20, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

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Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole building being joined together is growing into a holy sanctuary in the

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Lord, in whom you are being built together into a dwelling of God and the

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Spirit. Now, we've gone from kingdom to God's household.

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Now, to a building, more specifically, to a holy sanctuary in the

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Lord. Now, some of your translations will say holy temple in the Lord, and that is true.

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That is very correct. However, it's more specific than that.

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The reason that the Legacy Standard Bible chooses the word sanctuary here is because it wants us to understand that it's not just God's temple, that is, this entire building structure, but it's the center of that structure where God dwells, or dwelt, rather, in the

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Old Testament temple. Remember, we talked about this many weeks ago, about this wall of hostility that existed in the temple that separated the

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Jews and the Gentiles, and the further into the temple you got, the closer you got to God, with the high priest being the only one to go into the

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Holy of Holies. So, what Paul is saying here is not just that we are being built up into a temple that used to exist, and now exists in the

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New Testament church, but the very heart of that temple, where God dwells.

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That's what it says in verse 22 as well, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the

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Spirit, but we'll get to that more in depth and momentarily. The thing that I want you to see here is that we are, in fact, if we are in Christ, if we have been saved by His blood, thrust into being stones of this holy sanctuary that is ever -growing and ever -expanding, but, just like any building, it must have a proper foundation, and it must have a proper cornerstone.

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Let's take this one at a time. Verse 20 says that we are, of course, like a building, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and then, of course,

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Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. What does it mean that we have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets?

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Now, I am going to move past this somewhat quickly, but I want you to know the reason that I'm doing that is because next week, we're going to have an entire sermon dedicated on what it means that, or rather, what biblical prophecy is and what has continued and what has not continued, and I wanna dedicate an entire sermon to that so we can understand what

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Paul is saying and what he is not saying, and in God's providence, he's given us and afforded us the time to really dig into that concept.

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With that said, it is important at this juncture to understand what's being said and what's not being said so that we can understand the flow of argumentation.

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As I said just a second ago, if you're going to have a sturdy and well -built building, you have to have a proper foundation, and the foundation that we, as the church, are being built upon is that of the apostles and the prophets, and Paul is making this argument because he wants to understand that unity is important and that we have to be unified and that we do have unity, but that unity, friends, does not exist because we just all desire to go along, to get along.

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Do you hear what I'm saying? Christians do not have unity, do not possess unity, do not desire unity for the sake of unity itself.

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We have unity in Christ that is built on the foundation of the apostles.

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What I'm trying to get at is anytime we, as Christians, speak of unity within the church, we must be careful to determine what kind of unity we are actually talking about and what unity we are not talking about.

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The thing that I want to put forth here is that the only unity that is worth having, the only true unity, is the unity built on the revealed truth of God centering in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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So when Paul is saying here that we are, as the church, this holy sanctuary being built up in the

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Lord, have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, what he's saying is it has been built on the witness of the apostles and prophets and the teaching that they have given us.

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Christianity is not something that we all get to necessarily just come to on our own.

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It is a handed down faith. It is a stewardship. The apostles, inspired by God, wrote the scriptures along with the prophets.

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And that is the truth that has been handed down to us. This is why the

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Bible in me theology is horrible. The Bible does not mean whatever you want it to mean.

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You can't just pull verses, kicking and screaming, out of context and apply your own hermeneutic.

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You can't just wake up today and decide what church is. God is not working in and through new prophets today.

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Why? Do you know how I know that? One, because they're always wrong.

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And when they're somehow statistically surprising and are not wrong, they're either lucky or say something that agrees with scripture.

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And as John Owen has said, if your prophecy agrees with scripture, it's unnecessary.

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And if it disagrees, then it's evil of Satan himself. I also know that because with a building, there's only one foundation.

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You don't continue to build foundations on top of foundations. The foundation is the bottom layer of anything ever being built.

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And so when he's speaking of the apostles here and the prophets, he's speaking of those who were uniquely used of God to receive and proclaim special revelation.

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As Peter says, the apostles were carried along by the Holy Spirit and wrote.

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God used their personalities. God used their experiences. God used their intellect or lack thereof to write the scriptures.

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He laid his foundation, sent his son, who was the last word to be spoken according to Hebrews chapter one, and trusted these men to continue to hand down their apostolic witness.

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In other words, they are the only ones who have ever been inspired by God.

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And it's their teaching and their witness that laid the foundation for the church,

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Christ Jesus, of course, being the cornerstone, which we'll get to here in just a second. And it's that foundation that we rest on.

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We don't continue to build more foundations. We listen, we learn, we study, and we pray for illumination.

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God does not have a new word for his people because the old words were good enough. 2

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Thessalonians 2 .5 makes this irrefutably clear. So then, brothers, Paul says, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.

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You notice he doesn't say, for the leadership in your church. This is why we're

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Baptists. We believe the authority comes from this book. And the pastors here at Heritage have no authority beyond what is written here.

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Jesus is our lead pastor. His word is our forms of unity. 2

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Thessalonians 3 .6, just a little further down in the same letter, Paul says, now we command you, brothers, in the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who walks in an unruly manner and not according to the tradition which they received from us.

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But this isn't just Paul's witness. This is also Jesus' witness. In Matthew 16, Peter confesses that Jesus is the

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Christ. And Jesus says to Peter, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

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Now, of course, this text here is highly debated in terms of what it is saying. Is Jesus building his church on the confession of what

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Peter has said, namely that Jesus Christ is Lord, or is he building his church on the apostolic witness who

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Peter acts as a sort of head of? This is why the Roman Catholics, for example, believe that he was the first pope.

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Of course, we reject any such notion, but I want to say this, regardless of where you land in terms of interpreting this passage, you can't separate the apostle from the message.

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You understand what I'm saying? And the apostle is the one carrying the message. So whether the message or the apostle is how you interpret this passage, it is kind of the same thing.

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And we can see this in Revelation chapter 21 when we see this heavenly new Jerusalem being presented before John's eyes.

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And it says, and the wall of this city had 12 foundational stones. You see, you have the apostles being the foundation of this church being built, and on them were the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the

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Lamb. Friends, the basis for what is commonly called cessationism, or I would say the biblical understanding of the work of the

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Spirit, is the claim that the church was built on the foundation of the apostles, of the prophets, and nobody else since has been building onto it.

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And that Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, the central and unifying truth upon which the entire structure of the church is built.

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Here, he continues on, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. So you have this foundation built on the apostolic witness of Jesus Christ and what he has done and what he is doing.

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And then, of course, Jesus Christ being this cornerstone. Now, this is taken essentially from Isaiah 28, but it's also speaking into how buildings were built and technically are still built.

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Now, to be fair, I am a preacher. I am not a house builder. I do not dabble in construction on the weekends.

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If I have anything break, I try to fix it, and when that doesn't work, I call Pastor Corey. But from what

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I understand, there is this cornerstone in all, at least especially in the first century, that governs the entire structure.

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This could also be translated keystone. This is seen even in Roman arches.

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There is one stone that is stuck in the middle of the arch and held there, and other things are built around it, and that is what keeps everything in place.

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And the same way in a building, there's a cornerstone that everything else is built off of, and it helps with the structure.

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It is the strongest point in the structure. But of course, Paul is not only paying attention to what's happening outside of his window, but he's also paying attention to what the

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Scriptures teach, and there's been this prophecy in the Old Testament speaking of this great cornerstone that would come.

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In Isaiah 28, 16, the prophet that was laying the foundation says, therefore, thus says the

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Lord Yahweh, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed.

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He who believes in it will not be disturbed, or another way you could translate is destroyed.

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See, Isaiah saw, looking into the future, having been inspired by God, that there would be this lovely stone placed in Zion, in Jerusalem, a stone that would be tested and a stone that is costly, and it would be firmly placed, and whoever believes in that stone, namely

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Jesus Christ, the cornerstone would not be destroyed.

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I hope that helps you to stand in awe of God's prophetic work in the

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Old Testament. And we know this is speaking of Jesus, not just because of this passage, but also because Jesus took

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Isaiah 28 and applied it to himself, also along with Psalm 118 .22.

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In Psalm 118 .22, David, acting as a sort of prophet, said, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

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And this was far before Jesus ever came on the scene. Jesus then, adapting these two pieces of imagery, says in Matthew 21 .42,

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do you never read in the Scriptures? Jesus doing what only

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Jesus can do, right? Did you not read? Do you not know this was coming?

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The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the chief cornerstone. This came about from the

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Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Jesus understood him to be the prophetic fulfillment of Psalm 118 .22

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and Isaiah 28 .16, the cornerstone that the entire New Testament church, the new covenant, would be built.

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He knew he would be rejected by men, and he knew that he would see his posterity flourish.

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What does this mean practically? It means without Christ as the cornerstone, the church cannot stand firm or remain united.

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He is that thing which binds us all together. He holds the foundation in place, and he moves in and through his kingdom, his family, and the building of the church.

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And it says here, what? That he would join them together, having been joined together, rather.

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It's something that has already happened spiritually. We must make sure that it happens in reality as well, because it has been purchased for us, and that it is continually growing, growing.

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How is it growing? It's growing both in quantity and qualitatively. God's church is going to continue to grow despite everything that's going on in the world right now.

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I mean, the world couldn't have gotten crazier this past week. I don't know if anybody pays attention to the news.

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There's a lot of wild stuff happening in Israel. We've had

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Biden for a while running for president. That's bad enough. Donald Trump just became basically pro -choice over this week.

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The country's falling apart. When we look outside our front door, we can easily start to worry about what the future might hold.

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But the truth, friends, is that the church, God's kingdom and his family, is going to continue to grow and to be loved and to be cherished by Jesus Christ the righteous and God the

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Father. And he's going to continue to grow it in number, but he's also going to grow it, according to our text, qualitatively.

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That is to grow in holiness. It's not just a sanctuary in the Lord. It's a holy sanctuary in the

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Lord. The growth, as I said, of course has to do with quantity, but it's more concerned with quality.

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As the Lord, by the grace of his Son, saves sinners, they are added stone by stone by living stone to his sanctuary.

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And this adding to the church will continue until all of God's elect are gathered into its fellowship.

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And we need to understand this qualitative growth, because so many churches do not care about that.

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Most churches do not care about holiness, but God cares about holiness.

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And he cares that his church would be holy. It is the holy sanctuary in the

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Lord. It is vital that we understand that growth in numbers is no substitute for growth in holiness.

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But oftentimes, the church, and this is not shocking in a place like Tulsa, Oklahoma, is more concerned about getting people into the pews than it is making and helping the people in the pews becoming more

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Christ -like and looking like Christ and being pure and ready for Christ's arrival.

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We are his bride, as what will be talked about in Ephesians chapter five. There's so many different metaphors that Paul uses, and we must be made ready for the wedding supper of the

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Lamb. And the good news is our unity as believers is not something that we achieve on our own, and our holiness is not something that we achieve on our own.

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It is informed and helped by the foundation and the prophets and it is in Christ Jesus, and it is in the church where God dwells in his spirit.

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He ends in verse 22 by saying, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the spirit.

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So this building that is being built up as we are all joined together is not just a place that God is building, but it is the very place that God himself now dwells.

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Now, friends, this is huge. This is huge.

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It's huge because God is here everywhere where Christ is named.

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That means he's here at Heritage Church so long as we hold to the apostolic witness, so long as we are a biblical church.

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Now, Heritage is not the only biblical church, and dare I say it, Baptists are not the only people who are in God's kingdom,

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God's family, because we are not united by all of these peripheral things, we're united by the truth of Jesus Christ as it is found in the scriptures.

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And wherever Jesus Christ is named, and wherever he is taught faithfully and accurately, so long as his people are being conformed into the image of Christ and built up as his body,

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God dwells there. What Paul wants you to understand is that if you are in a biblical church, if you are who he's speaking of here, then you are living with God, and you are also living in fulfilled prophecy.

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There's a famous text in 2 Corinthians chapter six. You know it very well because if you're a parent, you've probably used it to tell your kids that they should not date people who are not

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Christians. That's good advice, but use a different scripture because that's not what this is talking about.

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But, it says, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness, or what harmony has

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Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever, or what agreement has a sanctuary of God with idols?

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God is telling, or Paul is telling his people in 2 Corinthians chapter six to quit sinning, to quit acting foolishly, and to not yoke themselves with unbelievers who are making a mockery of God with the worship of idols, and essentially the worship of Satan by, and then he continues, and he tells them the reason that they should do that.

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Because they are, he says, for we are a sanctuary of the living God. Just as God said, now he's quoting from the

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Old Testament, pointing to the same reality, I will dwell in them,

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God says, and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the

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Lord, and do not touch what is unclean, and I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you.

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It's that family imagery. And you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.

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In the Old Testament, God dwelled in one place, the temple in the middle of Jerusalem. In the

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New Testament, in the new covenant, under our new king, our new covenant head,

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Christ replaces the temple as the place where God now dwells, by firstly, dwelling in us.

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As the New Testament says, we are the temple of living God. But then we are, corporately, the temple of God.

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No, that text is not teaching that we shouldn't have tattoos. It's teaching that God is in our midst.

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God is here. The Christian community is portrayed as a temple, implying that now, it, not a literal stone building, is the place of God's earthly dwelling by the

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Holy Spirit, a place of true worship and acceptable sacrifice. Jesus is the sacrifice.

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He's the mediator of that sacrifice. God's presence in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, dwells in and among us.

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And where he is, his spirit is. We're being built into a dwelling of God in spirit.

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So returning back to our beginning illustration, Charles Spurgeon said, despite her imperfections, the church is the dearest place on earth.

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Why? Because she's like a kingdom of fellow laborers. She's like a family where we can all love on one another and grow, and we have access to our

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Father. And we're like a holy sanctuary, being conformed to Christ's image by the power of his spirit, and we exist where God dwells.

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It doesn't get any better than that, friends. It does not get any better than that.

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And now we're going to take a turn in the book of Ephesians, and the church, after Paul revisits some gospel truth, because he doesn't want anybody to lose sight of the fact of this reality, that the church exists because of and for Christ, and that it has always been the truth that binds.

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So as Paul would likely say, love the church. Love the church.

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Give yourself to the church, despite its imperfections. Because Christ died for her and is walking with her.

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But more than that, love the Christ of the church. Give yourself to the

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Christ, because Christ has so wedded himself to the church, which, Christ has so wedded himself to the church, that to hate the church is to hate

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Christ, which is why, when Paul was persecuting the church, Jesus said, why are you persecuting me?

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God loves the church. We should love the church, because it is the dearest place on earth.