Word of Salvation – Vol. 27 No. 37 – June 1982

 

The Church: The Dwelling of God In The Spirit

 

Sermon by Rev. Paul Stadt on Ephesians 2:17-22

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 2:1-22

Psalter Hymnal: Nos. 322; 121; 85; 411:1,2,4,5; 466; 170:4

 

Paul continues to instruct us about the nature of the church.  We hear in our circles a lot about the church.  Sometimes for some of us we hear too much about the church.  I remember two ladies in Canada who married into the church.  Both of them separately remarked that they had never heard so much about the church as in the Reformed Church.  They were brought up with the idea that your faith was a very personal matter only between you and God.  You could believe pretty much what you wanted to about that relationship.  Faith is a very personal matter of course between each one of us and God, but there is more.  There is also my brother and sister with whom I have to reckon.  We are together in a covenant family, a household.  These two young ladies didn’t really like the Biblical concept of the church because they were not left free enough and private enough.  A lot of people have a different understanding of the church.  If anything the church needs today it is a Biblical understanding of itself.

With verse 17 Paul says He came and preached peace to you who were far away from all the promises and history of Israel and peace to you who were familiar with the promises and the history of Israel – in fact you were brought up as a Jew.  For through Him we both have access in the one Spirit to the Father.  Paul over and over again sets our eyes on the unity of the people of God.  We are brought together through the peace of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit.  Those two people who in the past would have nothing to do with each other are brought together into one body through Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit lives in each one of us and drives us together into a unity.  We are sewn together by a common thread.  The Holy Spirit is the thread that runs through all our hearts.

Let’s look at ourselves.  We call ourselves a Reformed Church after the Reformation.  Even though a goodly number of us were born in Australia or New Zealand – perhaps the majority – we are still considered a Dutch church.  Many of the older ones among us were born in Holland.  We come from different provinces: Friesland Groningen, Drenthe or Zuid Holland.  We come even from different denominations: Gereformeerd, Hervormd, Christelijk Gereformeerd.  Hardly any of us ever knew each other in Holland.  Here we are from all different places.  We come together in this building.  In Holland we would never dream of sitting together with each other.  What drives us together now in this country?  Is it because we all have one common national background?  I certainly hope not – and that is not the case.  If what keeps us together is our common Dutch background, we are no more than a club.  In the early years of (post war) immigration to Canada and surely here too people who never darkened a church door in Holland came along to the worship services.  They could talk Dutch and could meet with people of similar background.  Some of these came a few times and that was it.  But when the Spirit gripped their hearts by the preaching of the Word, they stayed.

If we are no more than a Dutch church in a Kiwi/Aussie surrounding, we won’t last long.  We don’t say we are the only church.  What unites us together from our different backgrounds is Jesus Christ.  We are not a Dutch church.  We are part of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, united to Him by the Spirit.  The next time somebody asks you, “Do you belong to the Dutch church or the Dutch ‘Reform’ church?” say, “No, I don’t.  I belong to the church of Jesus Christ united in one Spirit”.  We are always looking for ways to talk to others about Jesus Christ.  A good way to start a conversation would be to say, “I belong to the church of Jesus Christ”.  Then you and I have something right away to talk about.

Those who were far away and those who were nearby are brought together in the peace of Jesus Christ.  Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but you are fellow citizens, saints, and members of God’s household.

Throughout Paul’s ministry he had to struggle with two backgrounds in the church – the Jewish and the Gentile.  Whenever one side did not see the centrality of Jesus Christ and the unity in the Holy Spirit, there was trouble.  Nobody can wipe out their history and their roots.  They are part of us.  God brings into the church the riches of the different backgrounds and histories of people.  God can use those differences cleansed by His blood to make us richer in Christ Jesus.  Our wealth of course is in Christ Jesus.  What was not of Christ in our various backgrounds has to go.  Sinful people don’t want to give up what is not of Christ Jesus.  That was part of the problem in the early church.  The Jews said: we want this.  They could not distinguish what was only Jewish custom and tradition from what was revealed from God.  The Gentiles wanted some of their own background in the church too.  Paul says you have to get rid of what you want because that won’t pass the test of time.  We must take only what Christ wants in His church and what He gives to His church.

Paul talks about household in verse 19 – built upon the foundations of the apostles and the prophets, Christ being the chief cornerstone.  A lot of people are turned off by the church today, many young people among them.  They say ‘yes’ to Jesus Christ and ‘no’ to the church.  An impossibility: yes and no at the same time, but why has that ‘yes’ to Jesus Christ and that ‘no’ to the church business come about?  Many see the church as too highly organized.  They see it as a bureaucracy.  In our small denominations we don’t see it as much.  Some denominations are heavy with boards and employees.  In some parts of the world the tele is used as a witness: the ‘electronic church’ as it is called.  Many see the beautiful buildings and the showy presentation of one man.  Many see the call for more money for these huge cathedrals.  Many are turned off by what they see.  Is that what the church is all about, they ask?  Is it big buildings, modern business techniques, showy programmes, and calls for money?

If we come closer to home, why are some of our people turned off by the church?  There are a number of reasons, but let’s look at one possibility.  The church has a social side to it.  The church is people.  People are social creatures.  In our society or any society there is always the pressure to conform.  You have to go to catechism.  You should go to youth club.  You can’t skip the second service; we have two services, you know.  You have to say your prayers.  You have to sit through the Bible reading at the table.  The Christian life which is equated with the church very often becomes a whole lot of ‘have-to’s.  There is nothing wrong with have-tos of course.  But what do all these have-tos and pressures point to?  If these have-tos hang in mid-air without any reference beyond themselves or if we approach people if you don’t do these things you will go to hell, they become heavy burdens around our necks.  It was Jesus who said to His people, “Come unto Me all you who are heavy-laden and weary, and I will give you rest.  He said that to all who were being strangled by the do’s and don’ts, the have-to’s of the Pharisees.  Jesus says, come to Me.  I am the chief corner-stone.  My yoke is easy and My burden is light.  The Pharisees were playing around with the Covenant commands of God.  They cut off those commands from God and thus from Jesus Christ.

We have to ask ourselves as a church if we have made clear Who the cornerstone of the church is.  The church with all her rules is nothing without Jesus Christ.  He stands in the centre of the church and thus of life itself.  Sometimes with all our have-tos we have stood in the way of others and ourselves seeing Jesus Christ.  The church is a household, a family.  Paul uses another example for the church: a building.  The former Jews with their attachment to the temple understood how the temple building played a role in the history of God’s people.  The Gentiles too saw their gods locked up in temples, beautifully decorated buildings.  With both Jews and Gentiles the temple played a very central role.  The gods in the case of the Gentiles and God in the case of the Jews lived in a temple.  For Israel the temple was the place of meeting.  When Israel said God lived in a temple that meant for them that as God drew His people together He lived among them..  The Gentiles were always afraid of their gods.  They were attracted by their gods and at the same time repelled by them.  In Israel God drew His people together around Himself and He was in their midst.  Israel knew too that her God was not confined to a temple building.  The Scriptures sometimes call the creation itself God’s temple.  God was everywhere in His creation as well as in and among His people.  In the New Testament times God still uses the word temple, but now in a fuller sense than in the Old Testament.  The last temple building made with hands was destroyed in 70 A.D..  After Pentecost with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the temple became the people of God themselves.  God says your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  God’s church, His temple is His people.  God dwells in His temple as He did in the Old Testament, but that is us.  We are a beautiful temple in the Lord.

All of our bodies together in which the Spirit lives are being built into a holy temple in the Lord.  In Christ the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.  And in Christ Paul is saying to us: you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.  We are growing together; we are being built into a building in which God lives by His Spirit.

A building always has a cornerstone, at least an important building does.  When a church is built or a university, an art gallery – or maybe we should have a cornerstone for our houses too – there is a cornerstone laying ceremony.  We are being built into a building in which God lives by His Spirit.  Our chief cornerstone is Jesus Christ.  If we don’t see that we fall into Phariseeism with all our have-to’s.  We see that a lot of people have been ruined for life by the church because Christ was not in the centre.  The only thing many can only remember about the church is what you can and can’t do – to avoid hell.  They don’t remember Jesus Christ.  He was never seen by them to be the chief cornerstone of our building, our bodies together making up the temple.

Paul talks about a foundation for our building too.  Our foundation is laid deeply in the witness of the apostles and prophets.  The apostles and prophets wrote about Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone.  The prophets are the New Testament prophets like Agabus.  The apostolic witness which we have written down for us in the Scriptures gives the church its marching orders in Jesus Christ.  We are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.  We are that is, if we truly are known by Jesus Christ and we know Him.  Do you know that Lord Jesus Christ?  If you do then you are truly a member of the church.  If you don’t know Him acknowledge Him as your Saviour and Lord.

Amen.