The Mystery and Mission of the Church, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Church members are like a pile of bricks that when put together are a temple where God's Spirit dwells. Now watch this, no one brick by itself is the whole temple.

It's just a brick. In the same way, get this, none of us are complete in Christ without one another. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. You know, by itself, a single Lego doesn't really do much. You can't build anything or do anything with it.

And let's be honest, some of us can't build anything even if we had a whole stack of them. But today Pastor J.D. reveals that Christians are kind of like Lego bricks in a sense.

We can only accomplish our mission when we're put together and working as a single unit. It's part of our study of Ephesians called Mystery and Clarity. And if you've missed any of the previous messages, you can find them at jdgreer.com. Now grab your Bible and a pen and let's join Pastor J.D. in Ephesians two and three for the conclusion of a message titled The Mystery and Mission of the Church. So here's the way I would state the question to you. Can God be powerfully at work in your life apart from being a part of Christ's body, the church? You ready for this? This is the most politically incorrect statement of the day.

No, you cannot. So what we're going to do is we're going to read this passage where Paul talks about the nature and the purpose of the church and then we're going to try to answer four questions. Here they are. First question is why we should be involved in the church. The second question is how involved we should be in the church. Then the third question is what the mission of the church is. And then number four, what the implications of that are for you.

All right, you ready? Ephesians two verse 11. Therefore, therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, you were separated from Christ and you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. You're like, Commonwealth? What's Virginia got to do with this? And what's the commonwealth anyway? My wife is from Virginia and I'm always like, why can't you be a state like everybody else? All right, I don't know.

But don't get caught up on that word. The important thing is not the word Commonwealth. The important thing is what it says in verse 12, that to be separated from Israel was to be separated from Christ.

You see that? See how it says separated from Christ, alienated from Israel? God revealed himself first to and through the nation of Israel. And so if you were separated from Israel, you were separated from Christ. The other nations didn't know God. And if they wanted to know God, they had to become Jews and to enter the nation of Israel. You Ephesians, Paul says, and you Americans for that matter, you were part of those separated alien nations. You were, verse 12, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Now, this is crucial to everything Paul is about to tell them. Paul is reminding them that they were people who were outsiders with no hope.

And this perspective was to form how they think about all of their relationships. Let's keep reading here, verse 13. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our people, our peace, who has made us both one and is broken down in the flesh, in his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility.

These verses acknowledge something that we all know is true. And that is that our world is very divided. And there's real hostility between various peoples. Verse 14, for he himself, Paul says, is our peace, who has made us both one and is broken down in his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility.

How? By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. The walls of hostility got torn down between Christians because the work of Jesus shows us that humanity has a common problem, sin, and there's nothing any of us can do about it.

There's one problem of man and it supersedes race, religion, gender, education, and even political persuasion. And that problem is sin and the solution to that problem is the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ who did for all of us what none of us could do for ourselves. And Jesus' blood cleanses us all alike. And furthermore, when Jesus rose from the dead, see this, verse 15, he created in his resurrection, get this, a whole new race of humanity.

See how it says, verse 15, he created in himself one new man out of the two. In other words, if you are in Christ, your identity is not primarily as a white man or a black man or a Hispanic, you are a new race of man in Christ. See what happens when you realize, watch this, when you realize that your primary identity is something that Christ gave you, something his blood provided for you, all the other distinctions, they're still there but they just aren't that important anymore. The gospel does not mean that I cease to be white or that you cease to be black or that somehow I have to start acting like I'm from some other culture. It means that more important to me than being American or being white is the fact that I am bought by and raised in Jesus. And that reality factors larger in who I relate to and how I relate to them than does my socioeconomic status or my racial identity. Here's what I mean. We all like to be around people that are from our same culture.

Right? I mean, let me just, I'm just, I'm really kind of, I feel very nervous and tenuous about saying some of these things, but I'm just going to go ahead and just throw it out there and just see how it, how it lands. If you're a white guy, you walk into a gymnasium, basketball gym, and there's two groups of guys shooting basketball on either end, a group of white guys and a group of black guys. If you're a white guy, where do you naturally go?

And don't say it depends on whether or not you can dunk, don't say that, okay? But where do you naturally go? You go to the people that are most like you. If you're a black guy, you probably go to the thing with the black guys.

And if you're white, you probably end up gravitating towards, it's just, it's kind of natural. I mean, I used to play basketball with a group of black guys on a regular basis, and they all had nicknames for each other. Like one guy never missed three-pointers, so they called him money.

Another guy, he could just kill it, dunk at it. They called him Jam. My nickname was No Don't Shoot. And I'm not making that up. No Don't Shoot. That was what they called me. And I was like, I don't need this. And I need me a guy, a middle-aged, kind of balding, slightly overweight white guys. That's what I need.

I need to play basketball with those guys. I mean, in a sense, there's some, it's kind of natural. But listen to this. In Christ, we have something larger in common than our racial identities and our cultural preferences. We have Jesus. And in light of our commonalities in Jesus, our differences in race, culture, education, or income are actually quite insignificant to us. It's not that they're not there.

It's just that they're not that significant. So you and I can be close and be friends and love each other and want to be around each other, even though we don't share a common culture. Because our bond in Jesus is a larger reality to us than even our culture or our family is.

See, here's what I believe. Racism can never be truly overcome apart from the Gospel. Because the propensity to self-justification, the desire to be better than others, is just too strong. And if you ever do get over the divisions of race, you'll just find something else about yourself that distinguishes you from everybody else, so that where you graduated from school suddenly makes you part of an elite status or your political opinions, that makes a wall around you.

If you ever do get over race issues, you just become an elitist in some other way. Only the Gospel of Jesus tears those walls down. See, the point Paul is making is this. How God has treated you affects fundamentally and forever how you relate to other people. I look at everybody differently. I see the prostitute and I think, all my righteousness were like filthy rags. You know, every time I say this, somebody comes up to me after the service and objects, and you can keep right on objecting and I'm going to keep right on saying it.

All right? The literal Hebrew word that he used for filthy rags is a disgusting word. It is intentionally disgusting.

It means literally a bloody menstrual rag. All your righteousness was like a bloody menstrual rag to God. So I look at the prostitute and think, yeah, I'm a lot better than her. Right? How?

How? Because all my righteousness to God was like a bloody menstrual rag. Can I really look at the prostitute and think that I'm better than her when God's verdict on me is that? I see Tiger Woods. I can't look down on him and say, what a loser, how pathetic.

I want to sit down with him and explain that God redeems sinners, starting with me. I look at people who have less education than I do. And I think, but all my wisdom was foolishness before God, 1 Corinthians 1. I look at people who have messed up their lives and I say, yeah, but I was dead in my sins.

And dead is several degrees south of dysfunctional. We both had a common problem and Christ died for you and me alike. Thus, there is no pride.

There is no need for self-justification and thus there is no hostility. What made the early church so unique in the ancient world was that there was unity in the congregations that wasn't seen anywhere else. Rodney Stark, one of my favorite early church scholars, said that what made Christianity so absolutely unique in the ancient Roman world was that in its congregations were people who lived in unity that never got along anywhere else except for the church. In fact, it's interesting, when Paul goes into a city, a new city to preach the gospel in Acts 16, you know, a Jewish man every morning, I told you this, a Jewish man every morning would pray, God, I thank you that I am not a woman, a slave, or a Gentile. That was common practice for Jewish men. When Paul goes in as a Jewish man to preach the gospel in a new city, Acts 16 says the first person to get saved was Lydia, a seller of purple.

She was a woman. The second person to get saved was a slave girl. The third person to get saved was a Roman jailer.

You just get that? The first church that Paul is pastoring there has four people in it and it's a Jew, a woman, a slave, and a Gentile. There's a point that's being made and that is that and that is that the gospel is tearing down walls and bringing together people who otherwise are enemies.

Let's keep reading. Verse 18, you see that through him we got access with one spirit to the father. We got one spirit that runs through all of us and it's like a common blood that runs through the veins of our body. Verse 19, so that then you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens with the saints.

Paul, watch what he does here. He uses three analogies for the church and each one gets more intimate than the last. He says first of all you're citizens of one kingdom. Then he says you're members of the household of God.

See that next phrase? He says you're like family. You're like brothers and sisters with one daddy.

Verse 20, then you're built on. Here's your third analogy. It's you're like a building. You see how everything's getting more connected? You're citizens of one kingdom.

Actually you're brothers and sisters. Actually you're like bricks that are cemented together. Keep going because Paul develops this last analogy. He says we are bricks in a building built on the foundation of the apostles and the 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 are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirits. Also all Christians have three things in common he just said. All Christians everywhere all places all times three things in common. Number one they have a common source of righteousness. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of their acceptance before God. Secondly they have a common foundation of truth. See that phrase the apostles and the prophets?

That's a reference to the Bible. He says the one thing that stays the same in all churches everywhere is the revealed message of the Bible. The truths of this book are true for all peoples in all places in all times. Every culture will apply the truths here differently but those truths themselves never change.

There are two ways that people really get in trouble on this. On the one side you got some people who think that their culture is the supreme Christian culture and therefore everybody that becomes a Christian ought to become just like them. For example there's nothing sadder to me than going overseas to a church overseas that western missionaries have planted where the building looks just like one of our buildings where the people sit on chairs like our chairs where they hold hymnals and sing music from the 1940s as if like that's God's favorite music.

It's just it's sad because you're like music wasn't even good in the 1940s and now we're taking it around the world why wouldn't in fact here's interesting real quick I don't have time don't let me get off on this. The Old Testament New Testament there's a lot of corollaries between the two and a lot of the books in the Old Testament have a counterpart in the New Testament that's a whole sermon for all another subject all right but one book that doesn't have a counterpart is the book of Psalms. Psalms is the Jewish hymnbook and so it's written in a very Jewish way the songs have a very Jewish cadence to them. There's no book of Psalms in the New Testament you want to know why because God didn't want one culture's music being the music of the church in all cultures. Every culture has to come up with their own music that's why there's nothing weirder to me than going into some of our American churches where they're still doing music from 30 or 40 years ago.

Why would you do that? Or here's the other thing using a language in their translation of the Bible that nobody's spoken since the 1700s. I was raised in the King Jimmy okay so I'm not ripping in it. I understand like the King James version it is a great translation of the Bible but I just don't use wherewithal anymore. Wherewithal I've told you before it's like a white shirt you wear with all that's what it means to me wear with all.

I remember this one I remember six years old I memorized James 1 6. Count on all joy my brothers when you fall into and here's what it said divers d-i-v-e-r-s temptations. I had no idea what that meant and I did not know what it meant until I was 16 years old. It's actually an abbreviation of like diverse or diverse or various.

Divers temptation I was like is that like being underwater in the being underwater and seeing like you know a woman in a hot wetsuit is that a divers temptation? I don't get this. You don't take listen you don't take truth and you don't put it in the clothes of your culture and say that's the culture that God loves. But on the other side you get in trouble other people get in trouble because they feel free to change what the apostles and prophets taught.

They're like well this book is out of date so now we should update it. Now it should include things like homosexual marriage and open sex and be open to people of other religions but you're changing the apostles and the prophets you're not given that freedom. He says one foundation the apostles and the prophets and only one foundation. Here's the last thing they have in common is they've got a common purpose. Paul says all Christians everywhere are built together as a dwelling place by God for the spirit. So here's our four questions.

You ready? Number one why must we be a part of the church? Why must we be a part of the church? Remember your analogy church members are like a pile of bricks that when put together are a temple where God's spirit dwells. Now watch this no one brick by itself is the whole temple. It's just a brick. You wouldn't want to live in a brick or buy a brick. It's when they're put together all the bricks together are the temple. No brick is complete without all the others.

It's just a brick. In the same way get this none of us are complete in Christ without one another. And in one sense the spirit of Jesus does not dwell fully in any one of us. He dwells fully only in all of us. The spirit inhabits the whole building thus it is only by being a part of the body of Christ that I will experience the fullness of Christ.

See that means two things. That means a if you want to know Christ you must be intimately connected to his body. The spirit dwells in the whole body not in any one part. That means there is so much of Christ you're going to miss out on if you're not connected to the body. Check this out Paul says this the next chapter three chapter three verse 10. So that through the church Paul says the manifold wisdom of God might be made know like manifold what man is another kind of car manifold like commonwealth it's got a lot of weird words in it.

Manifold just means multi-folds or multi-faceted. There's a part of God's wisdom there's a part of his beauty that is revealed in you that's not revealed in me. You see the church is like a mosaic.

You know mosaic where you've seen that where you've got like an individual picture and then when you kind of back up from it that individual picture is part of a larger picture and all the pictures together make up one bigger picture. That's what the church is. I've experienced some things by Christ in my life that you have not experienced and there are some things that you have experienced about Christ that I have not experienced and there's a part of his character and there's a part of his giftings that are revealed in me that are not revealed in you that are not revealed in you and there's a part of him that is revealed in you that are not revealed in me and that means that if I want to know Christ I've got to know you because it is only you've been some of you have been through some things I've never been through and you can give me a picture of Christ that I cannot understand on my own and it's only by knowing you that I know Jesus. See the fact that God's spirit inhabits his church also means that if you want God to work in your life you got to be a part of the church. A lot of people try to pray to God to help them with something in their life and it's like they expect God to zap them from heaven. Now that's what God does you pray he fixes you zap that's plan A and if he doesn't do that well you know I guess you go get some help from the church for example you got a couple that's struggling in their marriage and they need God's help so they pray and they ask God to help them in their marriage now God could just zap them from heaven and all of a sudden they come home one day and they're all cheery and selfless and loving and if God doesn't do that well then I guess they could be in a small group where they learn godly relationship patterns where others are able to speak into their lives and support them but that's plan B that's not nearly as good as God zapping them or you got a guy struggling with alcoholism or a lust addiction so he prays to God for help God help me and he wants God to zap him from heaven with the Holy Ghost taser gun where suddenly he just loses all those desires and if not if God doesn't do that well then maybe he'll go get involved in some Christ-centered ministry at the church where guys can support him and speak into his life.

Do you get it? Plan A is God zaps you that's like the exciting stuff. Plan B is that you use the church.

Here's the revolutionary truth. The church is plan A. The church is the means by which God's spirit does his work.

It's where he dwells. We say it often here we don't want to be a substitute for your involvement in your local church. If you're not involved in this body of believers you're only experiencing a fraction of what God wants to show you about him so bring your lego brick and see where God uses you to build his kingdom. You're listening to Summit Life and a thought-provoking message from Pastor J.D.

Greer. Our latest Bible study resource follows our current teaching series here through the book of Ephesians and it has a new feature in it J.D. For this resource we've included a scripture memory component.

Yes we said back in January with our set of memory verse cards we wanted to make committing scripture to memory we wanted to make it a priority this year. I can't think of a better book to anchor that in than the book of Ephesians. In fact when I was teaching through mystery and clarity I actually memorized the entire first chapter of Ephesians because it's just it's true the more it got into me the more I found myself thinking about it and just instinctively applying its promises to situations it just it captured my soul with wonder and I want you to have that experience. The core passage of our study through Ephesians is chapter 2 verses 1 through 10 and so that's going to be the passage that we commit to memorize together during this study. You say that sounds like how could I ever memorize 10 verses you'll be surprised when you break it apart into small units that you'll have it memorized before you know it and I can promise you it will transform the way that you think and the way that you live.

By the way we don't just kind of throw you out on your own there's a very clear how-to section in the study that shows you some simple techniques for committing these things to memory whether you're you're good at memorization or not you'll find that this is doable. So let us walk with you in this I'm telling you there are few things that have transformed me more than memorizing scripture and I wanted to share that with you. We want to get you this nine-week study and all these things that go along with it if you'll just go to jdgrier.com you can find this nine-week Ephesians study it's it's right there on the front page grab it and and start walking with us as we explore the beauty and the mystery and the clarity of the book of Ephesians. You're welcome to request a copy of the study today when you donate to support this ministry at the suggested level of $25 or more. The Bible study is our way of saying thanks because your donations make Summit Life possible.

When someone hears the gospel through this program it's thanks to listeners like you who invest in the mission of God through this program. So give today and be sure to ask for your copy of the Mystery and Clarity study. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgrier.com.

I'm Molly Vitovich. Be sure to listen tomorrow when Pastor JD concludes this message on the Mystery and the Mission of the Church. That's Friday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.