The reason mountain climbers are tied together is to keep the sane ones from going home. Gerhard Frost comments, I don't know who said that or when or where, but I've chuckled over it, thought about it, and quoted it too. With a mountain of mercy behind me, and a mountain of mission ahead. I need you, my sister, my brother. I need to be tied to you, and you need me, too. We need each other to keep from bolting, fleeing in panic. and returning to the quote-unquote sanity of unbelief. It is a marvelous and miraculous thing that God has done in transforming a sinner into a saint. In our study through the book of Ephesians, Paul has already spent two whole chapters talking about the glory and the wonder, the miracle of transformation that God has brought into the life of everyone who believes. This morning, in Ephesians chapter two. We come to the end of that particular chapter where Paul mixes some figures of speech together to help us understand with greater depth and clarity exactly what this transformation looks like. Now I'm sure that there are a good handful of English grammar teachers who would point their finger at Paul, maybe shake their head, maybe shake their finger because he mixes his metaphors. Oh, but I'm so glad that he does because it brings richness and depth and clarity to what God does. The three images we're going to talk about this morning is the image of the kingdom, the image of the household, and the image of the temple. Our text in Ephesians chapter 2 this morning begins at verse 19, but in order to give you a refresher of where we've been, I'm going to start reading at verse 11. Therefore, remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called the uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision, which is performed in the flesh by human hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of providence, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, You who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall. By abolishing in his flesh the enmity, which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in himself he might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him, we both have our access in one spirit to the Father. Ah, so then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household. having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord. In whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. Image number one, that of a kingdom. We are new citizens before the Lord. Verse 11, before we get actually into the first point, I need to bring this back to your mind. Verse 11 begins with the adverb therefore. it ties the first and the second halves of this chapter together. In the first half, Paul talks about that grace by which we are saved. And in the second half, he talks about that grace by which we are united together as one. Now, in working together, bringing us together. Verse 15, he is purposed to make one new man. Verse 16, and put us together in one body. That's his purpose, that's his focus of what he's seeking to accomplish. And now we have, beginning in verse 19, we have these three images of what, in a more full way, what this working together, bringing us together looks like. The kingdom. Verse 19 says, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, dot, dot, dot. This idea of being a citizen, citizen of the kingdom, has very deep roots for Gentiles, for Greek-speaking people. The word citizen in verse 19 is built on the Greek word, the root of which is the word polis from which we get our word or which is translated city. You are familiar with the city in Turkey, the city of Istanbul. For 1600 years, that particular city was called Constantinople, or Constanspolis, Constans City. The emperor, in a very humble move, decided to name the city after himself. This idea of a polis goes way back in Greek history to the city-states. It used to be that the polis, the city, was your identity. You were a Spartan, or you were an Athenian, for example. Much like what we would say today is, I'm an American, or I'm an Oregonian. It was our identity. But now, in Christ, he has burned our passports. Taken them all away, shredded them, and then burned them. We no longer have the identity of the polis that we used to have. Our polis was of the world. But that's been taken away from us. Now we are new citizens of a different kingdom. Paul uses another very closely related word built off of the same root in the book of Philippians. In chapter 3, verse 20, he says, Our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly await for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our citizenship is not here. We have been issued a new passport We don't belong here anymore. Now, the positive side is God has welcomed us into his kingdom. And he has given us the legal status and privilege of coming into that kingdom. There is a negative aspect of that, though. And it's this. I can't have dual citizenship. That is, I can't be a citizen of God's kingdom and at the same time hang on to my old former passport and citizenship in the world. No, I am a different person in Christ. I have different citizenship, meaning I cannot live the way I used to live because I'm not the person I used to be. My identity is not in the world. My identity is in Christ. That's where I look for everything about living life. I don't have to chase after people to like me in this world. I'm not looking for the acceptance of other people. I'm not counting how many followers I have on this gram or that gram. I am looking to please only my Master. He is my point of focus. He is the object of my citizenship. I have a picture in my office of an eagle, a bald eagle. And right below the face of the eagle are the letters F-O-C-U-S. In big, bold print, focus. And underneath is the sentence, if you chase two rabbits, both will escape. You don't have two citizenships, you have one. If you are a believer in Christ, your allegiance is not to the world, the flesh, the devil. Your allegiance is to the Lord God Almighty who reigns forever and ever. Amen. That means that I'm going to be ignored. I'm going to be passed over. I'm going to be persecuted by people that have a different citizenship. We count the cost as we follow Christ. What is of greatest value? Well, Paul says that the grace of God that has saved us brings us together. We need each other for support, for strength, for encouragement, because this world outside of us is hostile. It is hostile to the gospel, and it is hostile to you and me because we are citizens of a different kingdom. Second image that Paul uses is also in verse 19. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household. You have been adopted into his family. He chose you. If you're a believer in Christ, God chose you. Now when Bible teachers are talking about the attributes of God, we pile all of the attributes of God into two categories. And they are these, communicable attributes of God and incommunicable attributes of God. Communicable attributes of God are those attributes of God like love and patience and righteous anger that the Lord communicates to us. That is, we share in them. We love because God loves. And we are patient because God is patient, and we are righteously angry because he is. Not to the same degree, not perfectly so in any of those ways, but we see some of the divine in us. We are created in his image. Bearing his likeness, he shares with us these attributes that I've mentioned as just examples. He communicates those to us. The incommunicable attributes are those which God does not communicate to us, doesn't share with us in any way, like God's eternality, like God's omnipotence, like God's omniscience. We don't share in those. We're not eternal, we don't have all power, we don't have all knowledge. Another one of the character, incommunicable attributes of God is his self-sufficiency. God doesn't need anything. From eternity past, God was perfectly content and perfectly complete in himself. He didn't need anyone to love him. He didn't need to love anyone or be loved by anyone. He was perfectly content and complete. Yet, he chose to create. He chose to create you and me. He chose to reveal himself to you and to me, primarily through the scriptures. He chose to redeem you and me who believe. He chose to adopt those who believe. He welcomes us into his household. We don't deserve it. He doesn't need it. But he wanted it. He chose to welcome rebel sinners like you, like me, into his family. We are a collection of misfits and former enemies of God. That he says, these are the ones that I want. I'm going to reveal myself in special ways to them. I'm going to use them to accomplish my purposes. The English Puritan preacher Thomas Watson said this, 17th century, grace runs through the whole privilege of adoption. In civic adoption, there is some worth and excellence in the person to be adopted. But there is no worth in us, neither beauty, nor parentage, nor virtue. There was nothing in us to move God to bestow the prerogative of sonship upon us. We have enough in us to move God to correct us, but nothing to move him to adopt us. Therefore, bless him with your praises, who has blessed you in making you his sons and daughters. Magnify God's mercy, who has adopted you into his family, who, as slaves, has made you sons. Of heirs of hell, he has made you heirs of the promise. And we see this from the lips, or we hear this from the lips of the Lord Jesus when He say, when you pray, pray this way, our Father. He welcomes us to call Him that. We are collectively members of the household of faith. Our belonging, our intimacy are with the Lord. He has given us new passports and adoption papers. Second page of your notes. Third image he gives us is that of a temple. At the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem built by King Solomon, he said this, 1 Kings 8, I have surely built you a lofty house, a place for your dwelling forever. And at the very same time, during his dedication prayer, a few verses later, Solomon said these words, But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house which I have built." What Solomon is affirming is this. On the one hand, the temple was literal and God would be dwelling in that temple literally, but in a spiritual nature. He would not be, could not be contained in that building. And yet we talk about the temple as being the dwelling place of God. Now that Old Testament temple was real, literal. We don't see it now because it has been long ago destroyed. In the New Testament here, we find this reference here in Ephesians 2 to a temple, but it is a spiritual temple. It's not a literal temple. Now when we think about a physical building, we think of that which is static. It doesn't move. It doesn't change. It just is. But the kind of temple that Paul is talking about is very dynamic. Read with me again. Chapter 2, verse 20 to the end of the chapter. Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. Peter emphasizes the nature of this temple in his first epistle, 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 4 he says, and coming to him as a living stone, which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God. You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So we together, having been given new passports, adoption papers, all of this has brought us together, united us together. Paul is saying, we are individually and collectively being built together into a living spiritual temple. We are living stones. That's a different image. Stones usually don't live, but we are living stones in the sense that there are occasions when we change and we walk away from our citizenship. and we go back into the ways of the world and we need forgiveness and we need repentance and we need to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God's mercy and grace and kindness. In that sense, we are living, dynamic, changing sometimes. Now, There are two aspects of this living spiritual temple that we need to unpack and understand a little bit more deeply. You'll find both of them in verse 20. namely the foundation of the apostles and prophets and Christ being the cornerstone. Those two aspects The foundation, the cornerstone, we need to look at a little bit more carefully with regard to this image of the temple. Now, if you are an architect working on a building project with a cornerstone, You know that that particular stone does not support the entire weight of the building, neither does it hold the structure together. But when we talk about Jesus being the cornerstone, we'll talk about the Apostles and Prophets in a minute, when we talk about Jesus being the cornerstone, we are saying that he's stepping outside of the normal use of this image of a cornerstone because he does support the weight of the structure. He does hold the structure together. In the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul uses a different figure of speech. but to communicate this aspect of Jesus bearing the weight of the structure built on top of him, namely his church. In chapter 3, verse 11, Paul writes, no man can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. He is that bedrock, that foundation that holds everything together. And he does bear the weight. But that's not the image that Paul is looking to communicate here in Ephesians chapter two. He's talking about Jesus being the cornerstone in the sense that he brings definition to the building. and he determines the shape of that building. There is a helpful biblical picture, a prophetic picture, of Jesus as our cornerstone. I invite you to turn with me to the book of Isaiah, chapter 26. Isaiah 26. I'm sorry, chapter 28, verse 16. Isaiah 28, verse 16. It reads this way. Thus says the Lord God, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly cornerstone for the foundation firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed. This prophetic picture is worth a second look. Isaiah is describing the father's work. And there is one, the cornerstone, that the father chooses. And according to the first part of verse 16, this one is tested, that is, he's tried, he's proven, he is approved. Further, it is a costly, that is a valuable, precious, rare, glorious, splendid stone. And it is firmly placed. That cornerstone which the father selects is properly placed, properly fixed in place. And that person who believes, That person who puts his trust in the cornerstone at the end of verse 16 says, he will not be disturbed, meaning he will not bolt. He will not flee in panic. No matter how strong the earthquake, that believer trusting in the cornerstone will not be shaken. The cornerstone is the Father's immovable rock. There's the prophetic picture. Now I'd like to give you a physical picture of this stone that the Apostle Paul is talking about. 4,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, there was a guy named Abraham. who trusted the Lord. God had given him some promises. Abraham trusted them, trusted him, and set in motion the nation of Israel that would welcome the Redeemer into the world. It all focused, Abraham's faith focused on God bringing that Redeemer through his own lineage. And Abraham was a very old man, older than any of us, and did not have a son. He had to have a son. God provided him with that son, with Isaac. And in Genesis chapter 22, we read of God giving Abraham a very hard command. He said, I want you to take your son, your only son, your only beloved son, Isaac, and I want you to take him to Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice. God was not looking for Abraham to commit that gross and heinous practice of child sacrifice. He was looking simply to test Abraham's faith. Abraham passed the test. He took Isaac to Mount Moriah. had prepared to offer him as a sacrifice, and the Lord said, wait a minute, he held back his hand. There was an animal, a sheep, a ram caught in the thicket. That's the one that Abraham offered. It was on that very site, a thousand years later, 3,000 years ago from where we stand today, where this ruddy shepherd of a boy named David became king and purposed to build a house for God on that particular place of Mount Moriah. Of course we know the story that David was privileged to gather all the supplies necessary for that project, but it was his son Solomon that was the one who was going to be building the temple. He was the one who put the shovel in the dirt. Solomon's temple took seven years to build and stood for 380 years. It was then knocked down by the Babylonians under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar. Following the subsequent exile and the return of the Jews, there was a second temple that was built under the leadership of Zerubbabel. That temple was nothing compared with the first. But it worked. It was a place where Yahweh was to be worshipped. We get down to the end of the first century BC, and King Herod the Great is responsible for the land of Palestine. He was called a king not because he was a king like we think of a king as a sovereign in his own country. Israel had been taken over by the Romans in 63 BC. But because of Herod's relationship with his his playmate from years ago, a man by the name of Octavian, who also was known as Caesar Augustus. Because of that friendship, that relationship, Octavian gave him the name King. Herod was a great builder, and he purposed to put money and time and effort into the rebuilding of the temple. More specifically, it was the building of the temple grounds. That second temple built under the leadership of Zerubbabel remained. And he began that process in 19 BC. And there was yellow construction tape around that site for 80 three years. It stood complete only six years before the Romans came in in AD 70 and flattened it. In the process of flattening Jerusalem and the temple, the Romans were purposed, focused, intent on destroying the entire structure of the temple. They wanted to dismantle the entire Western Wall. They only got so far before they had to stop. Now let me insert this here. In antiquity, cities were built on top of each other. You build a city and some bad guy come in, didn't like you, and he'd tear down your city and there would be all this rubble. And then somebody else would come in and they would build another city on top and somebody else wouldn't like you and would come in, destroy your city, and there would be nothing but rubble. And somebody else would come in and then build another city on top. So there are cities on top of cities on top of cities. That's how ancient cities worked. If you were to go to Israel today and you had a tour guide, it would not be uncommon for the tour guide to say, now this is the very street on which Jesus walked. Don't believe a word of it. Because the road on which Jesus walked is probably 50 to 75 feet below where you're walking. Is it close to where Jesus walked? Oh yeah, close, yeah. When I was in Israel in 2014, I had the opportunity to go and see some of the archaeological work that had been done in Israel, specifically around the Western Wall. And we came upon a rock that the Israelites had dug through the debris, and they found the Master Course stone. We might call it the cornerstone of the temple. This is the stone that the Romans came upon and said, we can go no further. Let me describe this cornerstone. The master course stone is 44 feet long. 44 feet, I measured it with my tape measure, is from this wall to Bob. Thank you, Bob. 44 feet. It was 15 feet wide from the edge of this table to that wall. And it was 11, it is 11 and a half feet high. From where I am standing to the ceiling is 12 and a half feet. Take 12 inches off of that. That is the size of the master cornerstone, master course stone as they call it. Now just for comparison's sake, I have to tell you this. They estimate that the master course stone weighs between 570 and 630 tons. Let me put this in perspective. Boeing aircraft's biggest airplane. Check me if I'm right here, Brent. 747-8 at their maximum weight load And that includes the aircraft itself and the passengers and any kind of luggage and freight and, of course, fuel. That particular aircraft will hold 63,000 gallons of jet fuel. The fuel alone weighs over 200 tons. Just the weight. Now, all of that put together is less than 500 tons. How can that get in the air? I don't understand that. But it flies. Yet the master course stone is more than 100 tons heavier. The Romans couldn't bust through that rock. Now all that for this. Jesus is that cornerstone. He is immovable. He will not be shaken no matter what the earthquake is. No matter what happens. No amount of hurricane is going to move that stone. He is our solid rock. And those who trust in Him will not be disturbed, will not be shaken. They won't bolt, they won't flee in panic. We rest on Him. The second image that we need to spend a little bit of time talking about here in Ephesians 2, related to this building, is found at the beginning of verse 20. Paul says that we have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Now, the word apostle means sent one, and when we talk about the apostles with a capital A, we're thinking of Peter, James, John, and the rest. We know that those are ones that have been sent out by God. addition to that we've got examples like in Acts chapter 14 where Barnabas is called an apostle. Was he a sent one of Christ? Maybe. Was he a sent one by the church? Absolutely. He maybe was a an apostle with a lowercase a. He was a sent one. We know that the apostles had responsibilities to proclaim the gospel and to lead people into faith and to establish churches. As for the prophets, that's where we get a little bit more ink in the commentaries. Because the people that write them aren't sure, are we talking about Old Testament prophets? Are we talking about New Testament prophets? Maybe, maybe both. Are we talking about Isaiah and Jeremiah? Are we talking about, from the New Testament perspective, men like Agabus and the four daughters of Philip who are prophetesses? What does it mean that we are built on the apostles and prophets? Those two individuals without names, those individuals with that particular gift are mentioned in a number of places in Scripture. 1 Corinthians 12, 14, Romans 12, Ephesians 4. These are individuals that have been gifted by the church to do what? Well, to receive revelation from the Lord and to speak forth that revelation to God's people. And in that sense, as the New Testament was coming together, it's through these gifted individuals that we have God's truth preserved for us for our growth and edification. The Lutheran scholar Lenski describes the foundation that these gifted men provided as nothing less than the, quote, impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. So the foundation upon which we establish our faith is given to us through these men. Bottom line, we have been called out of the world. We've been given new citizenship papers, we have been adopted into God's family, and we are being built together into a holy temple to serve the Lord, represent the Lord, be a herald, a proclaimer of the Lord's gospel, So we, though we've been called out of the world, we speak truth back into the world. For that, we desperately need one another. We need the gifts, the skills, the abilities of one another. Nobody has everything that's needed. The soul wherein God dwells, what church could holier be, becomes a walking tent of heavenly majesty. Let's pray together. Father, how we thank you for your glorious gospel and its work in our life. You bring us spiritual life. You bring us a new identity. We're no longer spiritual stiffs and strangers. We have belonging. We have purpose. We have life with you. We thank you for that. We thank you for calling us together. Enfold us together. Reveal to us our need and our dependence on one another. You, our Lord, don't need anything, but we get hungry and get cold and get lonely. We are dependent beings. We need each other. Remind us of that. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.