Ephesians chapter 2 tonight if you have your Bibles let's go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word tonight. Verse 19 through 22 we'll go back to this briefly tonight and then get to praying. Verse 19 says, and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builted together for inhabitation of God through the Spirit. Let's pray tonight. Father, we love you. We are thankful tonight that we have the Bible before us. Thank you tonight that we have a church that we can gather in. And Lord, tonight I just pray that you comfort your people. I pray you would remind us of the simplicity of the gospel. But Lord, what we have in Christ, and I just thank you for all that you're doing in our life, we pray that all of us tonight would seek to be more like thee. That song that we sang tonight, Lord, from our hearts, that hopefully that we really want to be like you and follow you and be Christ-like. So give us grace, Lord, to follow you more intently. And I pray tonight you'd help us as we look at the subject that we have before us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you. May we be seated. Tonight, last week we talked about the metaphors that the Apostle Paul lays down here in this text. You'll find that he uses us, referring to us previously before we were saved as strangers and foreigners. Now we're fellow citizens with the saints. So very interesting metaphors to explain what we are. He also talks about us being part of a family or the household of God. The building fitly joined together. So we are considered some very interesting terms are used to describe us. But I wanted, and this really hit me this week on that that phrase, the household of God. That tonight, when I thought about that, and I said, you know, I just can't go any further, let's just kind of look at that a little closer. That's a very powerful statement, because it shows us a picture of salvation, what we are. And I want you to notice the words here in this phrase, in verse number 19, it says, ye are no more. Now in my devotions this week, I just kind of looked at that. That is, that is a declarative statement. That is also a statement that shows present tense. It does not say, ye will be one day. It says, ye are no more. That's present tense right now and meaning you're no more strangers and foreigners. And so the point, and it hit me, is that when When we're placed in the family of God, we're never out of the family of God. You cannot lose the salvation that God gave you when you're placed in there. You are now, right now, present tense, you're part of this family. We need to remember that. We need to remember what we are in Christ. We need to know what we have in Jesus Christ. We need never to forget that God's grace is what reached us and we by faith accepted that grace, accepted that gift and God by his wonderful mercy place us into that family and uh and right tonight if you're saved you're part of the kingdom the kingdom of God tonight it's it it's in you tonight and thank God for that uh one day we'll be part of the kingdom of heaven but we're gonna go there one day but right now we're part of the kingdom of God our spirit uh and that we are of God. And so right now we're part of that family. We're taken from the family of Satan and we're placed in the family of God. And we're now part of a building. We're part of a building project. A perfect building project, might I add, that God is putting together. Not us, but He being perfect. And He reached down and He said, to worthless lost sinners drew us to himself through the Holy Spirit by his grace and we don't deserve him, we don't deserve to be in this family, we don't deserve to be in this building and here we are tonight having something very precious not earned by our good works, not earned by our good deeds, According to Ephesians chapter 2 verses 8 and 9, it's not by works of righteousness and it's for by grace you are saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works. Not of works. Amen? Lest any man should boast. So Paul's message is here. A message of salvation showing us, hey, you're part of a household. You're part of a household. It's a message. It's a powerful message to show that you were one day this and now you're not. Amen? And I love the phrase when you look at that it says, ye are no more. Ye are no more. And I love that cross-reference that with 2 Corinthians 5 17 where it says, therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a what? new creature all things are passed away behold all things are become new you you made a made a transition you got out of the right you got out of the wrong family and you're in the right family now the family of god in fact first corinthians 6 it tells us that verse 9 it says no you not that the unrighteous should not inherit the kingdom of god Occasionally, occasionally, I'll get those phone calls that want to sell me something or scam me out of money. How many ever got one of those phone calls? Okay, so I always do this. I'll stop them, say, first of all, I want to say thank you for calling me. and let them know. And it's usually from a foreigner or some type of voice, and I'm not going to pick on the voice right now, but, and they'll say, well, we're going to work on this and we're going to get it taken care of. I said, I do appreciate it. Before, while you're, while you're checking that out, could you please ask, answer me one question? If you died today, are you a hundred percent sure that you're going to heaven? And usually there's a pause, usually there's a little bit of a, why do you ask such a question? And I said because the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 6 that, be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abuse of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revelers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." And at that point, they're usually hanging up on me. But the church of Corinth had those, man. They had extortioners previously live by extortion and having extortion and people that just partied and thieves and they were covetous and they were drunkards and they were abusers of themselves with Mankind, I mean these were people that had sexual deviations, they were all kinds of wickedness, and it says in the next verse, and such were some of you. You're not that anymore. Amen? And so when you're looking at this phrase tonight, that ye are no more, such were some of you, it's past tense. Amen? You're not what you used to be. Amen? You're not what you're going to be, but you're not what you used to be. Praise God for that. You're going to heaven if you're saved tonight, but you don't have to identify yourself by what you used to do. Amen? Praise God for that. And so there is in this text here, I believe, a reminder of what it is that we got when we got saved. We are in. Okay? Can't lose it. It's like you can't lose the Willy Wonka ticket, man. It's, you got it. You're in because of Jesus Christ. Y'all with me? I just dated myself on that one. Okay? You got it. And it's not you earning it. You received it. And now you have salvation right now. He that hath a son, hath. Present tense. Hath life. Amen? So it's a picture of salvation. Number two, you find here that in this household, there is security. We live in a country and I still lock the doors occasionally, but we want a secure home. I like to be in a secure home. Some of you live in neighborhoods where you would like to keep your doors locked all the time because of the neighborhood that you're in. Nothing wrong with that. Why? Because inside your home, there's a level of security. Now you look in verse number 20, I want you to note the security that we have in this household, not only is it salvation, you're part of a household now, but the security of this in verse 20, and let me just kind of run through this, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Now, just speak about this. This shows us something very powerful. I never considered this, but you think about what we are. So we are no more strangers and foreigners. Now we're in this household, we're in the family of God, and it's giving us clarity here that this is built upon the foundation of the apostles, prophets. And what does that mean? We're built upon that. Now what we're in is something that's not, as Paul said, the Apostle Paul says, that he is not beating the air. In other words, you're not wasting your time. Being in Christ, you are secure. And how secure is this? Because when you look at the apostles and you look at the word of prophets, why would the apostle Paul lay that in under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to let us know what this is? Because I believe this, if you look at this, salvation stands sure as the word of God stands sure. The word of God is a powerful foundation that all of us have tonight. It means that the apostles and the prophets, they received the word of God. And that word of God was transferred to someone else. Now down through the generations, we received it. Now catch this thought for a second. The gospels, if you remember, the apostles, of course, the apostle Matthew wrote the book of Matthew. The apostle Mark wrote the book of Mark and on and on. Luke wrote the book of Luke and the book of Acts. You'll find that you have John. John wrote the book of John. He wrote the book of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. He wrote the book of Revelation. You have the Apostle Paul. He wrote Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians. He wrote the epistle to the Galatian churches in Galatia, the Ephesians, the Philippians. He wrote the book of Colossians 1 and 2 Thessalonians 1-2 Timothy. Y'all with me tonight? So we have now the Apostle Paul, okay? We have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Most of our New Testament is written by the Apostles. What I say most of the New Testament is because I don't know who wrote the book of Hebrews. And anyone that tells you, it's a guess. We don't know. But I will say something very interesting that in Hebrews 2, 3, it says, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at first began to be spoken by our Lord and was confirmed unto the personal pronoun, us, us by them that heard him. So whoever wrote the book of Hebrews likely did not hear him. It was confirmed to us. So we don't know who it is. There's a case people make for Paul. I don't know that. But with the exception of the book of Hebrews, everything that we have in the New Testament is written by the apostles. tonight. Now why is that important? Because when you look at decade after decade after decade, the Apostles' doctrine, when you get into a book of Acts, the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, they followed that. They were saved, they were baptized, they were following the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship. What are they doing? They were following what the Apostles taught. The Apostles taught what they heard. We cannot speak but we've seen and heard. Now the apostles heard what Christ said, and they wrote what Christ said, the epistles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, now given to the apostles, and that given to the churches. And now tonight, we have, by God's grace, received that. And that's all we've done. Now it goes on to say, also the prophets, Now this is phenomenal here tonight. So we got now, we're built upon, according to verse number 20, watch what it says here in your text. It says, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So not only do we have the apostles that we follow, but now this gets mathematically cool, okay? Because now we are building upon the prophets. Now, when you get into this, this will blow your mind on what we have. It's mathematically impossible for us to be given something that both the prophets and the apostles 100% agree with each other. written 1,600 years apart, three different continents, 40 different authors, and they all talk about the same salvation, same Christ. And so when you're hearing what we have and the security we have in Christ, this household is not something that some man came up with and said, hey, follow me and I'll I'll give you eternal life. No, there's complex impossibilities that thousands of years before the Apostles ever lived, the prophets were predicting what was coming. In fact, when you look at the Apostles and the prophets and how in agreement they are. How the book of Daniel, for example, and the book of Revelation, as we mentioned many times, is like a hand in glove. You could study the book of Daniel, study the book of Revelation side by side. These are a tremendous study. Well, the book of Daniel is thousands of years ago. Here are the book of Revelation, 2000 years ago. And yet they talk about very similar apocalyptic events. That's impossible unless it was ordained of God. You look at the book of Daniel and look at the book of Jude, for example. You'll find some very interesting cross-references from the book of Jude back to Daniel. You'll also find Daniel and 2 Thessalonians. Jeremiah, for example, connecting with New Testament prophecies. How about Isaiah? Isaiah chapter 25 being fulfilled when 1 Corinthians 15, 53, 54 is fulfilled. That is gonna be fulfilled as predicted by Isaiah in chapter 25. Listen, there are 65,000, 65,000 cross-references in the Bible. To me, you look at this, it's not possible for that to happen unless something of divine nature put it together. So that's the household that we're in. Let me show you this. Many of you do look and watch Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson, a couple of years ago that I know of, that he was an agnostic, If you watch some of his videos, he just didn't, he didn't believe there was a God or there was an intelligent being or you cannot know. He, so he went from atheist to agnostic, but now he's starting to lean into the Bible. You're starting to see these videos come out about him understanding how this is something more than just a random possibility. I want to show you this clip here. I saw this several months ago. I said, one day I'm going to show this to the church. It's really cool. It's about two minutes long if you guys get that pulled up and and show to the to the congregation There's this postmodern idea about literature and about the world for that matter that If you take a complex piece of literature like like a Shakespeare play There's no end to the number of interpretations that you can make of it. You know you can interpret each word you can interpret each phrase each sentence and Each paragraph, you can interpret the entire play. The way you interpret it depends on how many other books you've read, depends on your orientation in the world. It depends on a very, very large number of things. How cultured you are, or how much culture you lack. All of those things. It opens up a huge, a huge vista for potential interpretation. And so the postmodernists sort of stubbed their toe on that and thought, well, If there's this vast number of interpretations of any particular literary work, how can you be sure that any interpretation is more valid than any other interpretation? And if you can't be sure, then how do you even know those are great works? How do you know they can't... Maybe they're just works that the people in power have used to facilitate their continual accession of power, which is really a... post-modern idea, a very, very cynical one, but it has its point. But the thing is, it's grounded in something real, right? It's like, yes, you can interpret things forever. I want to show you something here, just briefly. We'll go back to it later. Look at this. This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. So, at the bottom here, every single one of those lines is a biblical verse. Okay? Now, the length of the line is proportionate to how many times that verse is referred to in some way by some other verse. So you say, well, this is the first hyperlinked book. Right? I'm dead serious about that. Like, you can't click and get the hyperlinks, obviously, but it's a thoroughly hyperlinked book. And it's because, well, the people who worked on these stories, that are hypothetically at the end, right, which is... The end can't affect the beginning. That's the rule of time, right? What happens now can't affect what happened to you ten years ago. Even though it actually can, but whatever. Well, you reinterpret things, right? And then they're not the same. But whatever, we won't get into that. But technically speaking, the present cannot affect the past. But if you were looking at a piece of literature, that's not right. Because when you write the end, you know what was at the beginning. And when you write the beginning, or edit it, you know what's at the end. And so you can weave the whole thing together. And there's 65,000 cross-references, and that's what this map shows. And so that's a great visual representation of the book. And then you can see, well, why is it deep? Why is the book deep? Well, just imagine how many pathways you could take through that. Right? I mean, you'd just journey through that forever. You'd never ever get to the end of it. There's permutations and combinations, and every phrase is dependent on every other phrase, and every verse is dependent on every other... not entirely, but 65,000 is not a bad start. And so... So. You can't make that up. The 65,000 cross-references, and as Jordan was putting out, you can spend eternity going through those cross-references. In other words, the faith that we have is built upon the prophets and the apostles and the prophets. What does that mean? It's built upon the word of God. The apostles gave those that heard them the word of God and those that heard them gladly received it and at some point they gave it to someone else and then at some point they gladly received it and gave it to someone else and now down through the centuries someone introduced you to the same words. the words of Christ, these prophets, these apostles, the words of those, you received it. And in this generation right now, the blessing is that we have the opportunity to share it with someone else. Isn't this a blessing? And so this faith that we have tonight is secure because of just one element to this, but there's another element that even makes it even more secure. And that is the next phrase in verse number 20, where it says this, Jesus Christ Himself being the what? chief cornerstone. Now we have the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, but we have beyond that, which is in and of itself mathematically impossible unless God was in it, to have those words in agreement, all those cross-references all fitting together like an incredible, as mentioned here in this puzzle. But beyond that, we have now the chief, okay, cornerstone. We have now the person Jesus Christ himself. I love that, that, that personal, himself. Okay, just so it's not someone else, it's himself being the chief cornerstone. So our security tonight in this household of faith is from the chief cornerstone. of Jesus Christ. So it's the cornerstone that was the most important component to any ancient building. They would, before they would even begin to build, they would have to have a cornerstone that would begin this construction of that building. And sort of, it had to be able to not only support the building, But it had to be able to be accurate. It had to be placed perfectly and properly placed. Since every other part in that building was centered or connected to that cornerstone, it had to be right. It could not be off at all. And so if the building was out of square, anything like that, the cornerstone, would be the one that would be a problem. But the cornerstone's right, everything else is right. If the cornerstone's not right, then the whole building's wrong. Are y'all with me tonight? So that's why he says Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. And so this cornerstone was the support of those buildings and it's a reference to a unifier of everything in that building. In other words, tonight, I love this, we're from all different backgrounds. Some of you from the South, from the North, from the East, from the West. And yet, if you're in Christ, we're fitly, we're joined together and the word fitly is used to describe us tonight. We're part of that household, but it's a secure household. You don't have to check the doors. You don't have to check the windows. Nothing's going to happen to your faith. It's okay. It's built upon the Word of God, the apostles, the prophets, but Jesus being the chief cornerstone, He is perfect. Lynn and I, when we were in a two-bedroom apartment, we just had Emily, and so we had two children, and we were about ready to start the church here in Findlay. And we were praying, wondering what would be the name of this church. And we looked at Grace Baptist Church, and it was several different names we looked at. But for some reason, both of us said Cornerstone. And then we looked at Scripture, looking at Cornerstone. What does that mean? How does that apply to this generation? And we saw, even then, a drifting, crazy world that was coming. Not that we were prophets or anything like that, because you could see it. It was just getting weird. there needed, in our opinion, needed to be a place where people can come to a place where there's a foundation. And it's not Pastor Shepard, it's not even the church here tonight, it's the chief cornerstone. We wanted tonight, back then, 23 years ago, four years ago, that person of Jesus Christ would be the center of everything. That's why that chief cornerstone is so important because it is the very thing that holds everything together. If that's out, if Jesus is not where he needs to be in your life, then your whole life will not be where it needs to be. Emotionally, spiritually, socially, if that's not right, everything else falls apart. When I was a kid, my dad, we were the first contractors on the job. Now, I grew up in a contractor's home. My dad built, we put the foundations in. We actually poured the footers and then we laid the block. I remember as an early childhood, nine, 10 years old, I would be out there, first one on the job with my dad, and we would have to start laying out the foundation. And it was very important because my dad would pull a tape measure, and I'm just a little guy, I can't hold the tape measure to a particular line when dad's on the other side yanking on it. And so I was really careful, and he told me, you got to hold it onto this line. This is the setback. And then once we get that foundation all poured, and sometimes we would have a little rise in the foundation, we'd have to cut the block, and we can fudge that a little bit. But one thing you could not mess up on is when you lay the corner. The corner had to be a perfect 90, and everything was gonna be built off of that corner. So my dad would be the first one to lay the corner up, and later when I was able to lay block, I could build, those corners too, but dad typically did that. And there's a couple of times where we were off. We were off an inch, sometimes two inches at a square. And you talk about language that the carpenters would use to let us know how much they disapproved of our layout, but that happens. But the chief cornerstone is not ever, ever out. He's perfect. All right? And so that's why we're not Baptist cornerstone church. Amen? I cornerstone Baptist church. Baptist is the identification, historical identification with where we come from. Of course, we believe in the autonomy. We believe in the priesthood of the believer. We only believe in two ordinances. We have individual soul liberty. We believe saved and baptized members. We believe in two offices. And so we have all that as the distinctives of being a Baptist, but the chief of Cornerstone Baptist Church is the cornerstone, Jesus Christ. And so if you look at that application tonight for the church, he should be the cornerstone of your family, of your marriage, And because, why? Because if he's out, everything's out. Nothing will fit. It'll all be out. So when you look at this incredible connection that we have, we have security in it. And it's not by accident that the apostles and the prophets are in agreement. And it's not by accident that Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone is there setting everything right. So nothing is out. Bray's gone for that. So 2,000 years ago, when Jesus Christ came down, he went on that cross, he redeemed us as his bride, he is building this household. And he's been doing it for the last 2,000 years. It's his church. tonight. And he's coming back for his church. So, when you look at the apostles, the prophets, they just simply took the message they were given, they gave it to someone else, and generation after generation being added to this building, the building's still going. Amen? Can I say it this way? The building's still straight. Amen? We're not perfect, but the building's still straight. It's still strong. And the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back for this household one day. He's gonna call this household out of this world that right now is controlled by largely the prince and the power of the air. And so when you see this, it is a very secure salvation that you possess tonight if you're saved. Cannot lose it. It's built upon the word. It's built and settled. Jesus Christ can hold up his church. Amen. I mean, we're the pillar and ground of the truth, but we're not the truth. We're just presenting it to this lost and dying world. And people will believe it or people won't believe it, but Jesus Christ today still wants to build this household. Amen. And so look at verse 21, we'll finish up here. Verse 21, in whom all the building fitly. There's no accidents, fitly. I just don't fit anywhere. Yes, you do. Amen. I just don't fit in. Yes, you do. The word fitly is used. So you will fit in to this household somewhere. You might be a shingle. You might get blown off in a storm or two, but we'll get you back on there. Okay. You might be a cinder block. You might be a spigot. But you're connected to it, okay? You're fitly joined together, and the Bible uses framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. It carries the idea that the household continues to grow, continues to grow, which is a wonderful thing. I believe this, I think Brother Fetter said it years ago, that God has designed his house to continue growing. If it's not growing, there's something wrong, okay? And so grow, grow, grow, not grow with leaven. I'm talking about good, solid, biblical, sound discipleship growth, where we're continue reaching people with the gospel. And then verse 22, we'll finish. In whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God, through the Spirit. God just, He's inhabiting an habitation for God. Not the building. I said this before, this building's a spooky place when no one's in it. Amen? There's weird noises that go on in this building when we're not here, okay? God's not in this building, God's in you. You're a habitation of God. And so you are not an accident. Your salvation is secure. You are in, you are fitly, framed together. A master carpenter, master builder is putting his pieces together. One day it's going to be over. One day the completion will be done and he'll come get his household or his bride out of this world. But until that time, what we got to do? Continue building the household. And that's another thought. I may deal with this next week. Because really the one that builds the household is Christ. Amen? And I'll talk about that next week, all right? Let's pray, ask the Lord's blessings, and then we'll go ahead and give you some prayer requests tonight. Father, we love you. Thank you for just a few minutes that you were able to give us to look at this tonight. I do pray, as we look at this subject, that we would not feel like we don't fit somewhere. Help us to know where we're to fit. Guide us to truth. As a pastor looking at people, where to fit people, where do you need them? Where would you use them? And God, we all have gifts, we all have talents, and yet we're part of this household. Connected to this household, the cornerstone of all this is Christ. Thank you for the security that we have. the over 65,000 cross-references in the Bible that can all be cross-referenced, and tonight, here tonight, we're secure. But Lord, tonight, I pray you help your people, guide us and encourage us tonight, and we'll give you glory and honor. Thank you for the day you've given us. Help us to live for you and be Christ-like in this Christless world. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.