"Built Together" Rob Scanland

“Built Together”

Ephesians 2: 11-22

October 15, 2023 

Rob Scanland 

Introduction and Prayer

Let me begin by introducing myself, I am Rob Scanland, or as most of you know me, “Jenny’s husband.”  I am an Elder in this Church, although not currently on Session.  I also serve as a member of our church’s Mission Committee, more on that in a minute.  Please join me this morning in a word of prayer:  Dear God thank you for gathering us this morning to worship you.  Thank you for each of those you have called to be before this congregation over the past seven months and will be calling in the months ahead.  We have heard your voice through them and have been comforted and blessed.  Be with me and with us this morning.  Be with each of those gathered here, some physically, some virtually, all joined by your Holy Spirit.  Be our strength to do those things which you are calling us to do in the year ahead.  Thank you for Pastor Bob and his family, for his time with us and for preparing the way.  I will close with the prayer offered in Psalms 19 verse 14 “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, for you are our rock and you are our redeemer.”  Amen.

I would also like to reach out to several members of our congregation that primarily due to health issues have not been with us for some time. They remain very much part of our fellowship, this congregation and in our thoughts and prayers.  Shirley Parks and her daughter Deana Ercanbrack, Johannes and Lori Vanderwal, and Chuck and Pat Beattie, congratulations again on your recent 75^th wedding anniversary celebration.  We love you, each and every one!

Background

Here is a little background on today’s sermon topic.  I mentioned a moment ago that I serve on the Mission Committee.  As many of you know many years ago the Mission Committee instituted an Ambassador Program, where members of the Committee volunteered to be a liaison between the Mission Committee/Church and the missionary or mission organization we support.  During our twice monthly “Mission Messages” we often hear from our Ambassadors about what the missionary or mission organization is doing and what their prayer and other needs might be.  For many years we have supported the binational border ministry called “Frontera de Cristo” based in Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico.  In recent years I have had the honor of serving as their Ambassador.  Earlier this year on June 16^th we had the pleasure of hosting Mark Adams, Frontera de Cristo’s US Coordinator and his wife Miriam Maldonado Escobar, Mission Co-Worker.  We shared a potluck meal with them and with about 30 Journey of Hope bicycle riders and then heard from Mark and Miriam about their mission outreach and border experiences.  During a portion of the presentation Mark described one of the things they do when they host groups or church delegations that come to the border.  They read and discuss Ephesian 2: 11-22.  I had read the passage in the past but had not really looked into it.  When asked if I would be available to fill the pulpit today, I thought what better time to pray, contemplate and “look into” this passage from Ephesians.  My hope and prayer today is to share with you the results of that inquiry and provide some small insight into Frontera de Cristo and the  mission organization they are.  My biggest challenge in my research and reporting was to decide what not to include!

In preparation for today’s message, I would like to cite my references and give credit where credit is due.  This includes: The New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Scriptures; the “Believer’s Bible Commentary by William MacDonald;” John MacArthur’s book “Acts;” William Barclay’s “The New Daily Study Bible - The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians;” to each person who has filled the pulpit over the last seven months; and finally with fond memories of Pastor Bob, because his words, videos and teachings live on in each of us and will continue to inspire and strengthen us in the days ahead.

The WORD of God

Let’s read God’s Word from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible:

I am going to go back and start at verse 8, as I think it helps to set the stage for our scripture this morning.

Ephesians 2: 8-22

“For by grace you have been saved  through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before-hand to be our way of life.

So then remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” - a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands - remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.  He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.  So, he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.  In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD.

Response: THANKS BE TO GOD

The “Good News” synopsis

In the first half of chapter 2, Paul traced the salvation of individual Gentiles and Jews.  He summarizes that salvation in chapter 2, verses 8-10.  “For by grace you have been saved  through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God- not the result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before-hand to be our way of life.”  William Barclay in his book, “The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians,” says Paul insists that it is by grace that we are saved.  We have not earned salvation, nor could we have earned it.  That is to say that our actions have nothing to do with earning our salvation.  It is neither right nor possible to leave the teaching of Paul here - and yet that is where it is often left.  Paul goes on to say that we are re-created by God for good actions.  Here is the Pauline paradox.  All the good works in the world cannot put us right with God, but there is something radically wrong with Christianity that does not result in good deeds.  We know what God wants us to do; God has prepared long beforehand the kind of life he wants us to live and has told us about it in his book and through his Son.  We cannot earn God’s love, but we can and must show how grateful we are for it, by seeking with our whole hearts to live the kind of life that will bring joy to God’s heart.  Here is a synopsis of the Good news - we have been given an incredible, unexpected, undeserved gift - now go and live according, with joy and thanksgiving.

This is a good example of “looking into” a passage in the Bible.  It is not uncommon maybe right before the chosen passage or right after it, is something like this that just jumps out and grabs you, thanks be to God!

The foundation as told in the Book of ACTS

In the Book of Acts, Luke has chronicled the outreach to the Jewish community in Israel as well as to the Gentiles within Israel.  Our scripture today is Paul’s letter to the Church in Ephesus and reflects the ongoing outreach to Gentiles outside of Israel.  In John MacArthur’s book, “Acts,” he states the good news, Acts reports, was not reserved for only a few, but was for ALL, both Jew and Gentile, for everyone whom God created.  The Book of Acts as we have heard over the last many months is our story, it describes the events and the circumstances that brought the Gospel to “us” who descended from, for the most part, historically Gentiles.

Many of the Jewish/Hebrew converts in the early Church struggled with sharing the Gospel with those beyond their own tradition.  However, God’s extension of grace beyond Israel was not an afterthought.  From his first calling of Abraham, it was God’s intent that His chosen people should be instruments to bring salvation to the Gentiles.  “In you,” the Lord told Abraham, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).  In Elder Bob Vibe’s message last week, he preached on the Kingdom of God’s Law of Principle of Unity.  God’s plan for us, for His Kingdom, is that all believer’s in Jesus Christ would be united in Him and united with each other.  The Gospel reminds us that the contrast to unity is “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12:25).  Jesus knew that the fulfillment of God’s purposes would require unity.

That brings us to our scripture for this morning.

Our prior condition - utterly without hope

Paul begins today’s scripture describing the condition of the Gentiles before Christ came.  Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, but he never forgot  the unique place of the Jews in the design and the revelation of God.  Paul begins in verse 11 by reminding the members of the Church in Ephesus that they were Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision,” those who had not been circumcised.  They were called that, a very derogatory ethnic slur of the day, by “the circumcision,” those who had been circumcised, the Jews.  This is said to have been the first of the great divisions and sadly still exists today.  The Jews had an immense contempt for the Gentiles.  They said that the Gentiles were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell, and that God loved only Israel of all the nations that he had made.  Another description of a Gentile was “unclean.”  A Jew of that day could not even enter the house of a Gentile least he would himself become unclean.  The Jews were God’s chosen people, and they were darn proud of that fact.  They had physically, morally, and legally erected a wall around themselves and their God with the intent of keep “them” in and near and everyone else (Gentiles) far off and out.  The barrier between Jews and Gentiles was absolute.  Paul does seem to take some exception with the Jews boasting by saying their circumcision was made in the flesh by hands (accomplished with human hands).  It was merely physical.  Though they had the outward sign of God’s covenant people, they did not have the inward reality of true faith in the Lord.  The Jews enjoyed a position of great privilege before God (Romans 9:4-5).  The Gentile was a foreigner.  If he wanted to worship the true God in the appointed way, he actually had to become a Jewish convert.  Paul is reminding the members of the church in Ephesus that prior to Christ they were Gentiles, foreigners, strangers, aliens, and despised.

The Gentiles were without Christ: they had no Messiah.  It was to the nation of Israel that He was promised.  Although it was predicted that blessing would flow to the nations through the ministry of the Messiah (Isaiah 11:10; 60:3), yet He was to be born a Jew and to minister primarily “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).  In addition to being without the Messiah, the Gentiles were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.  They did not belong.  They did not have the rights and privileges of citizenship.  The Gentiles were also strangers to the covenants and promises that God had made to the nation of Israel.  Nationally they had no assurance that their land, their government, or their people would survive.  And individually their outlook was bleak; they had no hope beyond the grave.  They were without the one and only true God in the world.  They were God-less in a godless, hostile world.

In Jesus our Hope restored

In verse 13 and 14: “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall that is the hostility between us.” 

Now Paul uses two pictures, which would be especially vivid to a Jew, to show how the hostility is ended and a new unity has come.  He says that those who were far off have been brought near.  The prophet Isaiah had heard God say: “Peace, peace, to the far and the near” (Isaiah 57:19).  This was God’s plan from the beginning of time.  When the Rabbis spoke about accepting a convert into Judaism, they said that person had been brought near.  The Ephesian Gentiles had been rescued from the place of distance and alienation and  had been elevated to a position of nearness to God.  This was brought about at the time of their conversion.  When they trusted in the Savior, God placed them in Jesus Christ and accepted them in him.  The cost of effecting this marvelous change was the blood of Christ shed at Calvary.  When they received the Lord Jesus by a definite act of faith, all the cleansing value of His precious blood was credited to their account.  Jesus not only brought them near, he also created a new society in which the ancient enmity (the state or feeling of being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something) between Jew and Gentile was forever abolished.  Up until New Testament times, all the world was divided into two classes - Jew and Gentile.  Jesus introduced a third – the church of God. (1 Corinthians 10-32).

The second picture or phase of Christ work might be called demolition.  Paul describes that the dividing or middle wall of the barrier has been torn down.  This is a reference to the architecture of the Jewish Temple, which consisted of a series of courts, each one a little higher than the one that went before.  First there was the Court of the Gentiles, then the Court of the Women, then the Court of the Israelites, then the Court of the Priests, and finally the Holy Place.  Only into the first courts could a Gentile come.  In between it and the Court of Women there was a wall, or rather a kind of screen of marble, beautifully made, and set into it at intervals were tablets which announced that if Gentiles proceeded any further, they were liable to instant death.

Paul knew that barrier well – for his arrest in Jerusalem, which led to his final imprisonment and death, was due to the fact that he had been wrongly accused of bringing Trophimus, an Ephesian Gentile, into the Temple beyond the barrier (Acts 21:28-29).  So, the intervening wall with its barrier shut the Gentiles and all but the high priest out from any possibility of interaction with God.

Paul here is also alluding to Christ’s removal of the invisible barrier set up by the Mosaic Law of commandments contained in ordinances which separated the people of Israel from the nations.  The Mosaic law and ordinances in and of themselves and by their administration created hostility between Jews and Gentiles.

How were these two groups made one?

When a Jew believes on the Lord Jesus, he loses his national identity; from then on he is “in Christ.”  Likewise, when a Gentile receives the Savior, he is no longer a Gentile; henceforth he is “in Christ.”  In other words, a believing Jew and believing Gentile, once divided by enmity, are now both one in Christ.  Their union with Christ necessarily unites them with God and with one another.

The unity in Christ produces Christians whose Christianity is above all their local, national and racial differences; it produces people who are friends with each other because they are friends with God; it produces individuals who are one because they meet in the presence of God to whom they all have access.

Through union with Jesus, the formers combatants, Jew and Gentiles, are united with one another in this new fellowship.  The church is new in the sense that it is a kind or organism that never existed before. It is important to see this.  The New Testament church is not the continuation of the Israel of the Old Testament.  It is something entirely distinct from anything that has preceded it or that will ever follow it.  This is highlighted below:

1) It is new that a Gentile should have equal rights and privileges with a Jew.

2) It is new that both Jews and Gentiles should lose their national identities by becoming Christians.

3) It is new that Jews and Gentiles should be fellow members of the Body of Christ.

4) It is new that a Jew should have the hope of reigning with Christ instead of being subject to His Kingdom.

5) It is new that a Jew should no longer be under the law.

The church is clearly a new creation, with a distinct calling and a distinct destiny, occupying a unique place in the purposes of God.

Christ made peace between Jew and Gentile.  He did this by removing the cause of hostility, by imparting a new nature and by creating a new union.  The cross is God’s answer to racial discrimination, segregation, anti-Semitism, bigotry, and every form of strife between men.

The Family and the dwelling place of God

Let’s revisit the last four verses of Chapter 2, 19-22:

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.  In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

Here the Apostle Paul lists some of the overwhelming new privileges of believing Gentiles.  They are no longer strangers and foreigners.  Never again will they be aliens, dogs, uncircumcised, outsiders.  Now they are fellow citizens with the New Testament saints.  All Christians are first-class citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20-21).  They are also members of the household of God, they have been adopted into the divine family.

The church, that we remain a part of today, was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, of the New Testament era with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone.  The apostles and prophets of the New Testament are those who taught and wrote about the Person and work of the Lord Jesus. 

The unity and symmetry of the temple are indicated by the expression, “In him the holy structure is joined together and grow into a holy temple in the Lord…”. It is a unity made up of many individual members.  Each member has a specific place in the building for which he or she is exactly suited.  Stones excavated from the valley of death by the grace of God are found to fit together perfectly.  The unique feature of this building is that it grows.  However, this feature is not the same as the growth of a building through the addition of bricks and cement.  Think of it rather as the growth of a living organism, such as the human body.  After all, the church is not an inanimate building.  Neither is it an organization.  It is a living entity with Christ as its Head and all believers forming the Body.  It was born on the day of Pentecost (when the Holy Spirit came down to in-dwell us), has been growing ever since, and will continue to grow until the Rapture.

This growing building of living materials is described as “a holy temple in the Lord.” The word Paul used for temple referred not to the outer courts but to the inner shrine (Gk., naos), not the suburbs but the sanctuary.  He is thinking of the main building of the temple complex which housed the Most Holy Place.  There God dwelt and there He manifested Himself in a bright, shining cloud of glory.

There are several lessons for us here:

1. God indwells the church. Saved Jews and Gentiles form a living sanctuary in which He dwells and where He reveals His glory.
2. The temple is holy. It is set apart from the world and dedicated to Him for sacred purposes.
3. As a holy temple, the church is a center from which praise, worship, and adoration ascend to God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul further describes this holy temple as being “ the Lord.”  In other words, the Lord Jesus is its source of holiness.  Its members are holy positionally (by relation with and)  through union with Him, and they should be holy practically out of love for Him.

This morning’s scripture and chapter 2 of Ephesians concludes with verse 22: “ in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

In this wonderful temple, believing Gentiles have an equal place with believing Jews. The tremendous dignity of the believer’s position is that they (we) form a dwelling place where God can live in fellowship with His people.  The church, this church is that place.  The unity of believer’s and unity of God is also reflected in this final verse:

1. “in whom”, that is , in Christ;
2. “you also are built together spiritually,” it is in the Person of the Holy Spirit that God indwells us/the church (1 Corinthians 3:16); and
3. “into a dwelling place for God.” This temple is the home of God the Father  on earth.

That is what the church should be.  Its unity comes not from organization, or ritual, or liturgy; it comes from Christ – where Christ is, there is the Church.  The Church will achieve its unity only when it realizes that it exists not to propagate the point of view of any body of individuals, but to provide a home where the Spirit of Christ can dwell and where everyone who loves Christ can meet in that Spirit.  I praise God that The First Presbyterian Church of Carson City, now in its 162nd year, continues to provide a home and dwelling place for Him.  Let’s pray that we continue to be “built together spiritually” to provide a home where the Spirit of Christ can dwell and where everyone who loves Christ can meet in that Spirit.

In conclusion I am going to circle back to the beginning: Frontera de Cristo is an organization that serves God under the conviction that the unity in Christ produces Christians whose Christianity is above all their local, national and racial differences; it produces people who are friends with each other because they are friends with God; it produces individuals who are one because they meet in the presence of God to whom they all have access.  Frontera’s Vision statement is: To establish greater understanding through relationships, trusting that hope will emerge from despair, as it did for the Gentiles in Ephesus.  Their values, which underpins their “good actions,” are: To love mercy, do justice and walk humbly with God.  I am honored and humbled that our church is able to join them on that walk.

Amen.