God's Temple

Amen. You can take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians. Chapter 2, if you would, Ephesians 2. We'll be in. Verses 19 through 22 today.

Finishing up a third part of kind of a sub-series within the series, right? Our series is called One. And as we think about Uh this morning We're going to talk about God's temple. And I'm going to attempt to do two things. Two things.

Um uh i it in terms of by way of I guess theology, I'm going to try to accomplish a couple of things. But then beyond that, uh it's sort of to help us have a proper orientation as a church. But the two things theologically are we live in a place and space in this state and in this culture where we're wildly confused about temple. We just we really are. And we need to get square on that.

It's quite important actually. It'd be significant for you to know if going into a particular structure to do particular things would be beneficial for your life. and if it would enhance your spirit to walk or not.

So we should clarify that. Sure. And then we need to give a bit of a corrective to a long-held treasured Christian theological tradition that probably many of you hold to. And so, my hope is to do some real teaching this morning about this and walk through some things theologically to get a square on some things so that we can then. Arrive at the end of what 2:11 through 13, then 2.14 through 18 are getting at.

And so, when we started in 2.11 through 13, the theme in our message was brought near, and it was the idea that no longer are Jew and Gentile separated, and no longer are Jews this sort of people of God where the Gentiles are out, but rather God has brought the Gentiles near.

Okay. And then we saw in 14 through 18 that he's brought them near and placed them in one new man, that is the church, and in doing so he's eliminated hostility. And we emphasized last week That the deescalation, the doing away of hostility. for them was primarily ethnic. But for us sometimes it's relational, it's stuff we're holding on to and all kinds of things that we somehow don't let that gospel that flows down to us vertically, get all over us horizontally in our relationships.

The net end of that is the text this morning. The end of that is, if that's the case, if we've been brought near in one new man. having been cleansed by the gospel so that it flows horizontally to one another. What is all that for? To what end does all that take place?

And that's what we want to look at in our text today.

So go ahead and look with me in Ephesians 2, and we're going to begin, but I'm going to go back to verse 14, just so we get our context from last week. For he himself is our peace. That is, Jesus is our peace. who has made both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he may create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.

And might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace. To you who were far off, Gentiles, and peace to those who were near, Jews. For through him. We both have access in one Spirit.

and one spirit.

Okay. To the Father.

So then. This is where our text begins. In light of that, this is the conclusion. Yeah. You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him, you also are being built together. Into a dwelling place for God by The spirit. It's interesting that the so then ends up being basically a statement about what you are. It's not even so much a statement about what you're supposed to do.

The end point is Get Rightly. oriented to the kind of thing you are. You are.

So that's why we have to think about this idea of temple. And we have to think about it fairly extensively. To do that, what we're going to do is process through five features of the forming of God's temple that are in this text. The first begins. In verse 19.

So then, you're no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens.

Now, we've talked about this, and we're not going to belabor it because I've got way too much to talk about in the middle of this text. But This fellow citizenship is a big, significant thing, most importantly, because of what it set in contrast to. And so he's going to re-sort of dip back into what he had said in 11 through 13, emphasizing the brought nearness of the Gentiles and making the point that remember what you were. You were aliens and strangers, right? This is what the text tells you.

Strangers and aliens. Two words just mean the same thing, basically. Technically, they could mean different things. One could be a, the first one was used sometimes for a person who was traveling in a foreign land. The other was used more for like a resident alien, somebody who had taken up residence, but yet was not invoking and had all of the privileges of citizenship.

And so it was two kinds of things, but probably here he's just using two words to say the same thing, emphasizing the point that you were away. You were an alien, but no longer. You're now a fellow citizen with who? With the saints.

So you're brought in continuity. This one new man now is brought in continuity with all those who have been set apart by God for himself in relationship, going all the way back to the beginning. And so you're part of a historical legacy, a historically continuous community that we now call the church. And you're part of this dynamic, he's saying.

So you have this fellow citizenship.

Now, the language of this, though, isn't just about what past legacy you come now into the stream of, but it's also where the whole thing's headed. It's where the whole thing is headed. The whole thing is headed a couple and let me just give you a text and we'll move on to point two. Philippians chapter three, verse twenty. Philippians 3 verse 20.

says this, but our citizenship is in heaven. And from it we away the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. There's this language in Ephesians repeatedly of your spirit is seated with him in the heavenly realms. You have this in the heavenly realms, in the heavenlies, repeatedly. The idea is that as a citizen, you should orient yourself, yes, to your identity here horizontally with one another, but also that this community is actually destined for a place and that you are characterized then by that ending place.

And so your community now is supposed to be characteristic of that heavenly citizenship. It's supposed to be indicative of what one day will be. And you're supposed to pull back from that future into the present and live like it here and now. We'll get a little more of this as we go along. Number two.

It's not only about a citizenship, but it is. Why does that say number two, it's formed a fellowship, it's not supposed to say that. That says the wrong thing. All right. It's formed as a family.

If you're making notes, that's what you're supposed to write down. It's formed as a family. I'll have that corrected before the next service. Oh well, that's why we have two services. If you want the real good one, you come to the 11.

This one's just raw. It's formed as a family. That's the point. And it's a really important point because it segues to the next one.

So it's formed as a family. See the language? household language. But you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household. of God, the household of God.

Um If I delay. You may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, the Bible says. How should you act as a family? Think about that. Once you begin to texturize this place as a family, now you have some different things sort of going on when you texturize it as a family.

I mentioned last week about that illustration of my wife wonderfully punishing my children in ways that were unpleasant, which is the joy of every parent. And as they did that, the message was, your family, you can't walk away from this thing, right? Your family.

So here you have this family, but this family Is the church of the living God, and it's a pillar and buttress of the truth. We get household language in Galatians 6:10.

So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially to those who are the household of faith. I'm supposed to look at the first line of caring for one another is here. We're supposed to see each other and care for each other. And I think sometimes this family metaphor falls a little hollow in some of us, and I hope it doesn't. I remember my aunt, her name was Dorothy, and she had been crippled.

She had a disease that came on her when she was a beautiful 17-year-old girl, walking around just like every other 17-year-old girl might be. And she had a disease come upon her, and she became crippled for the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Could have difficulty handling and controlling her motor skills and even her voice in different ways. And she lived down the street from this little country church that I grew up in called South Edmoston Community Church. And when I say down the street, I mean literally right down the street.

And so there was a guy in the church who would come by, grab her in her wheelchair and would wheel her up. To the church, and they would pull her up. And it was this old historic New England church with big stairs going up, and for years they didn't have a ramp, and so they'd p big, strong guys would pull her up, and they'd get her sitting there on the aisle, and she'd always sit on that aisle about the third row from the back. And every Sunday night, they had a little hymn sing, and they would like take requests. What song do you want to sing today?

It was a little church, maybe 20 people there. And everybody, I want to sing, you know, number 365. Turn in your hymnals. And they'd sing that song, and then they'd sing another one, sing another one. And I remember the pastor's wife was the pianist, and she played beautifully, but boy, bless her heart, she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

And she'd go, man, she'd go, and we would do it all to the glory of God. And every week, my aunt sitting on that aisle would say, I have a song. And that song was always the hymn, if you've ever heard of it, called The Family of God. Why? Because this was all her family.

That's who it was. She treasured that because of her limitation and the uniqueness of connecting.

So she would sing, and that song starts off about, you'll notice we say brother and sister around here. We're all part of this family, a family so dear. And that metaphor needs to have a context to sort of get around. Don't wall your nuclear family off from this family. Incorporate your children, incorporate your life into a bigger family and experience the goodness of the household of God.

Now Having said that, Having said that, The household language is a step toward the ultimate metaphor that the sermon is about. And the reason that it is that is because the language of house. And the language of household has a much bigger thing than family in view in the Bible. A much larger thing in view. Um in fact, the language of household, when we see it throughout the text of Scripture.

Did a little study in 70, I think there's 81 references, something like that, to the phrase house of God in your Bible. The first one in the Old Testament is when Jacob at Peniel experiences the presence of God and says, this is the house of God. He calls it that. Every other reference, 75 or 76 references in the Old Testament to the house of God. are all a reference to the temple.

They all are a reference to the temple. The other references in the New Testament are also a reference to the temple. The New Testament and the Gospels in particular pick up that language of household. of house of a dwelling context for God in regard to temple. I'll give you one illustration because I didn't want to read 75 verses to you this morning.

Mm-hmm. Daniel 5:3, you see it crystallized. Then they brought. in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple. The house of God.

in Jerusalem. The temple Was referred to as the house of God. David originally wants to do that. Why? Because he wants to build a house for him.

That's where the language comes from in many ways. He looked around and saw the need that, wait a minute, I'm living in this great place, and God's got a temporary dwelling. He's got a pup tent, I got a castle. This isn't right, and so I want to rectify that. God says, No, you won't do it.

Solomon, your son, will do it. And so we have the temple that then moves from tabernacle to temple, but still house of God. Language. I want you to think about that because what I want to do is sort of. We're going to move through this text, but I almost have to take a theological aside a little bit.

And to do that, I want to teach you. A biblical theology about the temple. Because here is what I have found. most people think of when they think of temple.

Okay. The first is they think of a building in which you go and you do particular things that somehow move you a direction spiritually.

So that you can accelerate your spiritual development, you can become more like the Lord in some ways. But it's a location wherein sacred or ordinances of some kind happen. That's one.

Now, you might think that now. Because of temples that we see around us, even in our own valley. You might think that because that's what the temple was in the Old Testament in many ways.

So you might think of it in terms of that as a physical building that you go into, a physical structure. But if you're savvy, you step back from that and you say, no, yeah, but it was that, but now it's not, because the Bible in 1 Corinthians 6 says, what's a temple? It says, your body is a temple. of the Holy Spirit. But here's what I want you to notice.

Be a keen interpreter. Uh It says that your body is ah temple. of the Holy Spirit. Your your body isn't replacing theologically The idea of temple in the Old Testament that way. The language of temple is being utilized there because it's the logical next step, it's the logical conclusion of what it would mean for you to have the Holy Spirit living in you as a believer.

Of course then your body is a temple. Of course it is a place that is holy in that sense that it is set apart for the dwelling of God as a believer because the Holy Spirit is within you. It's not mapping on to the notion of temple in the Old Testament in the same way. Rather, it's just simply the theological implication of what it means for the Holy Spirit to live within you. That's important.

And it's important because We need to understand What then is, in biblical theology, the temple? If it is not a building, And if it is not, in that sense, Your body. What is it? And that's what we have to think about.

So to do that, I'm going to take you through a few texts of Scripture. And we're going to kind of move. this biblical development of temple. And so we're going to start in just the Old Testament. And I could give you scripture.

We could be here till tomorrow morning. We could have our temple vigil. 24 hours. But for now, I want you to think about Isaiah 56 for a moment with me. I just want you to see the language.

Keep in mind. House of God equals temple. Keep that in mind, okay? Thus says the Lord, keep justice and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come and my righteousness will be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the Son of Man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.

I want you to notice the text that we've been studying in Ephesians and watch the language here. Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely separate me from his people. Don't let the foreigners say, I'm going to be different from these people. I'm going to be an alien. No, no, no, no.

And let not the eunuchs say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord, To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me, and hold fast my covenant, I will give in see it? My house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I mean, this is what happens at the cross. the bestowal of a new identity.

But he says in his house. In his house, I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain. And make them joyful in my... And remember Len's message a number of weeks ago?

In my house of prayer, what's the house of prayer? It's a temple. It's a temple. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for. All peoples, Jew and Gentile, foreigner.

And you? The Lord, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, I will gather yet others. To him? Besides those already gathered. Yeah, I gather the outcasts of the Jewish nation.

But I'm going to gather others. As well.

Now Let's just kind of see what happens in the New Testament. That connects back here, okay?

So, 1 Peter, in a parallel text to this text in Ephesians, says, You yourselves. like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house. talking to the church. to be a holy priesthood. to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

What are you being built up as? a spiritual house. A house? where, according to Isaiah 56, A new name is given. A house.

where according to Isaiah 56, a foreigner comes And joins with one from Israel, a house where God gathers his people to a particular end, a house where his name is proclaimed and extolled from and in. We'll see this text at the end of our message. Do you not know that you are God's temple? And if you've read that text and thought, yeah, I know, my body is a temple, you missed that the you is plural. The U is plural.

He's not talking in that verse about you as an individuated molecular structure. He's not talking about you isolated from other believers. He's not talking about you opening your Bible at home. He's not talking about you at work on the job. He's talking about you insofar as you...

R You! Our God's temple. 2 Corinthians 6. And by the way, there's not a truckload of places. There's some.

There's a lot alluded to. But when you just stick with just temple language, there's a handful of texts in the New Testament that point this out. It's not ambiguous and it's not vague. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what partnership is righteousness with lawlessness, what fellowship is light with darkness, what accord is Christ with Belial, or what portion does the believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has look at this.

The rooting of holiness is in your corporate identity as a temple of God. What is the temple of God with idols for? We are the temple of the living God. Plural. We Are the temple of the living God.

As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. I have seen in the Christian church the individualized exegesis that wants to make the point that, yeah, I know, there's a right, we don't need a temple anymore because I'm the temple. I think it is. Stop, hold on. We Are the he walks among?

Among Therefore go out from their midst and be separate. From them, says the Lord. The root of holiness is the fact that God in His Spirit walks among us and touches no unclean thing. And then I will welcome you, and I'll be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion of the fear of God.

Holiness is rooted in the fact that Spirit is present among us, which is rooted in the theological truth that we. We are the temple.

Okay, now. is when I get to mess with all your eschatology. Here we go. Tabernacle Temple. Church is temple.

Now New Jerusalem church temple. Here's what I've heard people say. I've heard people talk like the New Jerusalem is this city. Physical city that descends in a future escaton, and we now go into this city. In sort of a physical kind of, I think it's a misunderstanding of something pretty important.

Hebrews chapter 12, verse 22 through 23. But you have come to Mount Zion. the city of the living God. Look at the next phrase. The heavenly Jerusalem.

And to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the Ekklesia is the Greek word. It's the word that is translated church. It does mean assembly in its rudimentary fashion. Of the firstborn, the church of the firstborn, the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, this is the church. And to God, the judge of all, and the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

By definition, this is the church. Which is the Thing you've come to, he says. You're part of a this is Hebrews. Get out of old traditional Judaism, walk toward Christ, and He's gonna make of you a new community. Guess what that is?

The new heavenly Jerusalem. You're leaving the old Jerusalem to the new Jerusalem. You're leaving. The old. Assembly.

For the new. assembly. The Church of the Firstborn. Take your Bibles and turn to Revelation 21. In case you're still suspicious of me.

Revelation twenty-one. We can't read all the chapter because of time, even though it would be lots of fun. I want you to read, follow me along. I'm going to go verses 2 through 4, and then I'm going to skip to verse 9. And I saw the holy city.

New Jerusalem. Coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a, what is the church? The church is the bride of Christ. prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

So you have Hebrews 12 telling you. that there's a heavenly Jerusalem. that's equated with the church. You have the New Testament. pointing to the church as the bride of Christ.

And you have Revelation 21 telling you that the vision that he sees is a new Jerusalem coming down, and what does it look like? Lo and behold, it's a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people. That sounds like temple language. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Skip down to verse 9. Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, Come, I'll show you the bride. The wife of the Lamb. We just had bride, now we've got bride again.

The wife of the Lamb. The bride of Christ. He's going to show them the church. And he carried me in the Spirit to a great house. high mountain and showed me what?

The holy city Jerusalem. Coming down out of heaven from God. Friends, what is the New Jerusalem? It's the church. It's the church.

Having the glory of God, its radiance like a rare, most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great high wall with twelve gates, and at the twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. On the east, three gates, on the north, three gates, on the south, three gates, and on the west, three gates, and on the wall of the city had twelve foundations. Do not miss this. You file this away because we're going to come right back to it, okay?

Verse 14, get it in your head. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the what? Twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. You're going to read in just a moment that this church is built on the foundation of what? the apostles and prophets.

Huh?

Now skip down to verse 22. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty, the Lamb. That is, God is among them. Here. It's all of a piece.

in the eternal union that takes place. And the city has no need of sun and moon to shine in it, for the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is a lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. You put it all together.

The church is the temple, so now go back to Ephesians chapter 2. And what he's going to do is explain for you and me. What that temple looks like. Verse Yeah. It is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

It's built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. I'm not going to spend a ton of time here. Uh there's interpretive questions about Apostles and prophets, is it Old Testament prophets? Is it New Testament prophets? Is it apostles?

Is apostles and prophets because of a linguistic piece called the Granville Sharp Rule, which has this one article with a noun and another noun that sometimes can refer to one thing? Is it apostles who are prophets? And there are different interpretations. It's pretty clear it's probably not Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles because the order would be false. Clipped.

We would have Old Testament prophets mentioned and then apostles. And so there's some interpretive question what's going on. What I want you to see is primarily the apostolic link. Because the authority is the key thing in place here. I read to you from Revelation 21.

That the names On this foundation are the names of the apostles. And the idea is this. that the founding and grounding of the church is the doctrinal apostolic teaching. I've watched Protestants do such hermeneutical gymnastics that they're going to break their back. When Jesus says about Peter, Peter, you are Peter, and upon this rock I'll build my church.

Listen. The rock is Peter. It doesn't make Peter the first pope.

Okay. This doesn't mean Peter the first Pope. The rock was Peter. It was just a historical fact. In Acts 2, everybody's in confusion.

In Acts 1, everybody's in confusion. And it says, and Peter stood up. And then in Acts 2, again, and Peter stood up and spoke. And Peter preaches a foundational sermon that then the whole book of Acts and the story and narrative of the development of the church springs out from. It started with the rock.

It just started with Peter, right? Why? Because he stepped in a prime place. In that way, as a leading apostle, To mitigate confusion and to say, we've got some doctrine here, and we need to get back to the gospel and build this whole thing on the gospel. It's the reason why.

Jude 3 says, when he's dealing with a bunch of false teachers, beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you all to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Because false teaching gets away from apostolic doctrine, the foundation of the church. Is apostolic doctrine. Don't let somebody come and say something like, I don't really care that much about theology, I just love Jesus. I hate that.

I mean in almost every fiber of my being. That sends me just to the moon. Mm-hmm. It's the equivalent of me saying, I don't want to know about my wife, I just love her. It doesn't map on.

Uh See, 'cause when I love her, guess what I want to do? I won't get to know that chick. Inside and out, upside and down. Right? That's what happens.

That's what happens when you're in love with Christ. You want to know every nook and cranny. You want to figure it all out. You want to perseverate about it. You want to meditate about it.

You want to think about it. You want to let the queen of the sciences of understanding Christ come and just flow over you so you can saturate your life even more with his goodness.

Now The foundation. Is that which stems from these apostles and prophets? But how do we know the foundation is right? Look at your text. Christ Jesus himself being The cornerstone.

The Acregonians. Um important text here. Paul's alluding to Isaiah 28, 16. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion a stone. And I want you to emphasize this next phrase: attested.

Stone. A precious cornerstone of sure foundation, whoever believes. Will not be in haste. Real quickly. Because of time, I need to zip through this.

But I want to give you four implications of Jesus as the cornerstone, okay?

So we have Christ as this cornerstone and the idea first. is that everything doctrinally is going to get measured off of that stone. This is why I can't just say I don't care about theology, but I love Jesus. I gotta know the angles of the stone. I got to know the plumb lines that come from the cornerstone.

I got to know the direction. That is pointing. I've got to understand the contours. All apostolic doctrine is measured according to Jesus' character. and Jesus' teaching.

Everything flows from Christ. Christ in that way. That is why that verse, Isaiah 28, 16, calls him a tested stone. He is that stone by which everything is tested. Everything is shored up.

Everything is identified. Look at your text. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom, that is in Christ, the whole structure. What's this picture? It's a temple.

The church is this temple built on the apostolic doctrine. This whole structure. Being joined together, it's a passive participle, meaning someone else, God, is joining this thing together in His Son. Grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Second implication.

All individual character and theological formation. Is with regard to the church. Here's what I want you to see. You see the words. being joined together.

being joined together. Since Sin together with S Y N. Armalageo. That word armalageo was used of a pile of stones that would be piled up and organized for a tomb.

Okay. It also could be used of a mosaic. that was put together in an artistic manner and was formed. Sh Now When this building was being built, my office, that wall that's right back there, my office was right off of that wall. And I saw Actually the wall behind that, that you're going out when you go out through the breezeway, the next wall, go straight down across.

I could sit at my desk and I literally looked straight down the wall as they were building it.

So I watched it going, and I could like pick a groove and I could look down a groove and I could look all the way down a groove. Yes. Because those guys had it spot on, man. I mean, they measured that thing. They had lasers going and all kinds of stuff to get it exactly right.

In the ancient world, you didn't have bricks and mortar in the same way. How did they pile stones? They piled stones by Chiseling. By buffing. By shaping the stone so that the stone fit with the next stone, which fit with the next stone, which fit with the next stone, which fit with the next stone, which fit with the next stone.

Here's the translation. To be a temple of God, God's got to work on you and you and you and you and you and you and you and me. In the uniqueness of what it means for me to be me, and you to be you, and you to be you, and you to be you, and you to be you, and you to be you, and to take all your rough edges and start rubbing them.

So, if you feel like you're God's project, that He keeps putting you through the ringer, guess what? Circle gets to square, bingo. Yes. You are.

And you always will be. Because he's forming you. As part Part. of the temple. You're getting formed as part of the temple.

Join together. Oh, there's a lot of pain in that joining, my friend. There's a lot. Has it occurred to you? That your disappointments Or just chisel marks?

Has it occurred to you? that your relational strains I just Buffing spots. Has it occurred to you? That the internal discontentment that you have Is God at work? Has it occurred to you that the marital dynamic that makes you want to just bust apart at the seams?

Is that old southern gospel hemphill song going, He's still working on me? To make me what I ought to be. Took him just a week to make the moon and stars. The Earth and the Sun and Jupiter and Mars, how loving and faithful he must be, he's still working on. Me.

He was going Your character matters because the temple matters. Right. You'll see why the temple matters here in just a minute. Number three, the work of forming us together is focused on our holiness. It's not focused on my happiness or my glee.

Oswald Chambers wrote, God has destined one end for mankind. Holiness. His one aim is the production of saints set apart. God is not an eternal blessing machine for men. He did not come to save men out of pity.

He came to save men because he had created them to be holy. Look at your text. Joined together grows into a... See it? Holy He could use any adjective, beautiful, gorgeous, eternal.

Holy Temple. That's what he's after. In the Lord. Number four. The work of forming us together in holiness is continual.

Continual. How do I know that? Because I know that cuz grows. is a present active verb, that's on. That means that this thing grows, grows, grows, grows, grows.

And he keeps forming, forming, forming. He's going, going, going, going, going. It is continual.

So implications. All apostolic doctrine is measured by Christ as the cornerstone, all of it. Stones with rough edges. Get shaped. To the end of holiness, and just when I would like to raise my hand and say, I've had enough, he says, Nah, we're not done yet.

And he keeps going. Christ as a cornerstone. And all of this is so doctrine and character find their expression in the beauty of Christ.

So that we get to this place at the end of a new Jerusalem. That is the church. And in this community, God dwells. And now you have a bunch of people who look like Christ with the presence of God at the center. of the church An eternal, unmitigated Community.

And so what's happening is we are... on that trajectory. And so, what we have to do then is go out there, pull back, and say, Now, how are we doing on that? Because the end of this whole thing is what? It's that God takes up residence among us.

That's what we saw in Revelation 21, verse 22 through 26.

So In Him, in Christ, you also are being built. It's a passive, God's doing it, into a what? into a dwelling place. For God. By the Spirit.

That's what's happening. He is forming his church.

so that his spirit walks Among Us. Let me go back. I told you I'd finish here. Let me go back. 1 Corinthians 3, 16 and 17.

Do you not know that you are God's temple? We saw that plural, you are, and that God's Spirit dwells in you. held that part. Till now. Because that's what it means for you to be God's temple.

But the dwelling in you is a corporate dwelling. The dwelling in you is a walking among you. The dwelling in you is as we are the church. If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, for God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. I don't like that church.

Careful. Think about it. Weigh your Google review. Just at least review it maybe once or twice. two thousand times before you send it.

The point isn't that somehow There's something about Leadership, or something about other people, and vengeance, and no. It's that you have to recognize that while you might feel like the evangelical church is just falling apart and it's the low-hanging fruit, and we can just cast aspersions at all of it, you might want to slow those aspersions. You want to be careful. You want to be a contributor to wholeness. Not an armchair critic.

that lobs and walks away. Mm. Why? Because he's telling you. Anyone who destroys what's God's temple?

It's not a building. It's the church. It's the church. Why does unity matter? Because God's temple matters.

Who wh wh why does being on Mission Together matter? Because God's temple matters. Why does staying as a family and facing things matter? Why is 14 through 18 so significant? Because we're his temple.

Why does the celebration Of healthy diversity in unity matter for eternity because we're his temple. Why does my personal holiness matter? Because we... or his temple, and I I get to be a stone. You get to be a stone.

Don't dislodge your life. from the big picture, from the meta. Stay moored to the micro. I mean, stay more to the meta. Stay in the big story.

of what God has. Because he has mapped this whole church thing on. Not as a loyal order of water buffaloes who are like a glee club to God. He has this. as his Temple.

It's temple. And we need to recognize that. That's why relationships matter, and that's why gospel is so centric that we rehearse it again and again. And that's why I can't get frustrated when God is working on me, because He's working on me for me. And he's working on me for you.

And he's working on me for him. And he's working on you for you. But he's also working on you for you and me. And others.

So that we would be a temple. for the very presence of God. Father, I pray that you would help us in our lives. to map on to holiness and community that we would see, Lord. That you have destined the church for a place of eternal blessing.

A place of eternal Benefit, a place of eternal community and a place of your presence for eternity. I ask that you'll encourage us in our walk toward holiness to not run off of the anvil. To not be unmoored from what you're doing. with your temple in Jesus' name. Amen.