I'd like to have you take your Bibles out tonight and we turn to the book of Ephesians once again as we continue our study of that epistle. We are especially thinking about or trying to remember the book of Ephesians in terms of three words, the word sit, the word walk, and the word stand. Okay, we're going to look at the last part of chapter two, Beginning at verse 19, consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. We're going to stop at that point this evening and take those verses and please keep your Bibles out tonight. It's always good to have your own Bible because then you can make notes and do some underlining in it. We don't appreciate it if you do that in the Pew Bible. So I always encourage people to take their own Bibles to church. You know, one of the things that strikes me about my worship and about my attitude toward the things of God, of what I have in Christ, is how dull it is. How dreadfully dull. how it lacks the kind of excitement that ought to be there. And I don't know if you experience the same thing. But, you know, sometimes we become more excited about having a date or buying a new car or catching a fish. than we become about the things that God has done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. More excited than being adopted as children and blessed with every spiritual blessing and chosen to be holy and without blemish before him in love and being seated with the Lord Jesus Christ. And those are the things that Paul wants to impress upon us so that we will be excited about it. And so that with the Apostle Paul, we will praise the Lord. And I don't know, you probably heard the story of the man that attended our church once. And not being from our heritage, was distracting other people around him by saying, amen, brother, and praise the Lord. And the man behind him was getting a little bit irritated by it. And finally, the next time he said, praise the Lord, he tapped him on his shoulder and he says, we don't do that in this church. Now, of course, children, that's a story, isn't it? That really isn't true. But the Apostle Paul is not ashamed to say, praise the Lord, and to say it often. If you read chapter one, you know, it is full of that, wasn't it? It is full of praise to the Lord for the ABCs of our salvation. You remember those ABCs that were adopted and that were blessed in the Lord Jesus Christ with every spiritual blessing and that were chosen in him to be holy and without blemish. And Paul gives praise for the two R's, that we are redeemed and reunited. And he gives praise for the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee, the down payment, of our inheritance and on and on he goes and he wishes that we would praise him more and he explains these things to the Ephesians and to us so that we will praise God more and in fact in chapter 1 you remember he begins to pray if his explanation doesn't do it he begins to pray that we will get a vision of what it means to be seated with the Lord Jesus Christ. In chapter 1 verse 17 he says I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better. And then specifically in verse 18b, that we would get to know the hope of his calling, the riches of his inheritance and his great power. And then Paul can't even mention these things about what he's praying about without beginning to expand them again. And as a matter of fact, that's what chapter two is about, you know. It's an expansion about what he happened to say in his prayer. So that in chapter two, he's telling us about the greatness of God's power, that he's praying that we will get to know. And he talks about the greatness of our inheritance that we want to know. But he doesn't forget, he doesn't forget what he was saying. He doesn't forget that he got on a little tangent. He didn't forget that he was telling them how he kept on praying for them. But when you get to chapter 3, verse 14, then he gets back to that subject again of prayer. In chapter 3, verse 14, we read, for this reason, And you should remember those words, by the way, because you're going to find those different times. He says in chapter 3, verse 14, for this reason, I kneel before the Father. And then in verse 16, he says once again, and I pray. And you see how this ties it all in. If you go back once again to that chapter 1, verse 15, he began there by saying, for this reason, for this reason, and he never stops giving thanks to God the Father. He says, I keep asking, and then in chapter three, verse 14, he gets back to that subject again. For this reason, he says, I'm praying for you. Actually, he tried to get back to the subject in the first part of chapter three. I didn't read that either, but you'll notice in chapter three, verse one, those three words again, where he says, for this reason, and he was gonna tell them why he's praying, but he gets off on another subject. but he doesn't forget what he's talking about. And so today I'm asking you whether or not Paul's prayer is being answered in your life. Whether the eyes of your heart are being opened to see how great is our inheritance and how wonderful the riches that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Are your eyes being open to that? To the fact that once you were not to God's people, but now you are. Once you were not citizens, but now you are citizens. You are members of God's household. You are citizens of his kingdom. Did you reflect on that in this past week? You know, last week I began to look at these verses. Did you reflect on those things this week? Did you think anything about them? In the times of meditation and prayer, did you think, oh yes, last week Sunday, the Lord reminded us that once we were not a people and now we're, did you think about that this week? You see, when we begin to reflect on those things, then our praise begins to come and our worship begins to be more exciting and our joy is made more full. And we will not be dull. And we will find joy and peace and excitement in the Lord Jesus Christ. Last week, I said, last week, we began to look at those things that we have in the end of chapter two. And I want to reflect a little bit more on that this week. The theme of the sermon is, as you can see from the outline, more than citizens or something like that, even more than citizens, more than citizens. Let's begin by saying we are citizens. Did you think about what that meant this past week? We started to think about that last week. Did you think about it during the week? What it means to be citizens, to be members of God's kingdom, to be members with believing Jews, to be the apple of God's eye with them as the people of God. You know, I thought about that this week, that we have a lot of, or several immigrants in this church. Some of you have risked almost everything to become members of this nation. I mean, you have left family, you left friends, you left relatives, you left an inheritance perhaps in the old country. Some of you, in looking at the opportunities that were afforded in the United States for the sake of your children ate dirt almost in order that you might live in this country and give your children an opportunity to be citizens of this great land. There are still people who risk life and limb for that. Think about the boat people, for example. Think about those who have been in camps for months and years with a hope that one day they will be able to come to the United States. Think about those who leave their wives or their children in order to get here so that they might be able to bring them. Well, if you remember an earlier servant, park the cab, folks, because I've got news for you. That ain't nothing. compared to what we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are citizens of God's kingdom. Your citizenship is numbered among Israel, the nation of God. And that's why I sang from Psalm 33 this evening. I'd like to have you turn there just a minute to Psalm 33. Remember Psalm 33 says, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. That's what we're thinking about this evening. We are citizens of God's kingdom. And the psalmist said, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Now, why are they blessed? Why is it such a blessed thing to be citizens of that kingdom, the kingdom of God and of Jesus Christ? Well, in verse 11, it tells one reason. See, in verse 12, it says, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. In verse 11, the previous verse, it says, for the plans of the Lord stand firm forever and the purposes of his heart throughout all generations. Why is that? Why is it that God's plans stand? Well, verse 10 tells you why. Because the Lord foils the plans of the nations. He thwarts their purposes. It's not only that God thwarts the purposes of nations, but you see in verse 6, and we sang about that, by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry hosts by the breath of His mouth. So you see, the Lord's purposes stand firm because neither nations nor nature can change His plans. is nothing, not a snowstorm, not the movement of a communist nation, nothing can thwart the plans of God. Now my friends that isn't just theology, that isn't just theology, that's just not a philosophy, that's exactly how that works out in history. And you and I are privileged to live in a time when we can look back on it to see exactly the blessedness of the nation whose God is the Lord. Remember the people of Israel when they cried out in Egypt, they cried out to God for deliverance. And they were under the thumb of the most oppressive and the most cruel nation that could possibly find. God delivered them without their raising a hand, without their having one sword, without shedding one drop of blood. God delivered them from an impossible slavery. In fact, God so worked it that the Egyptians pleaded for them to go. Blessed is a nation whose God is the Lord. That's what it means. He did it. when he went to the Red Sea and he commanded nature to make a path in the sea so that the people could walk through on dry ground. And we look in the back in the history of our country and we think about George Washington crossing the Delaware, he had to find boats. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. He opened up the sea for the people and then called the water back down on the Egyptians. Exodus 15 talks about that. Exodus 15 talks about how blessed it is whose nation is God the Lord. You think about the song of Moses and the Israelites. When this happened, they said, I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted, the horse and its rider. He has hurled in the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. He is my God. I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a warrior. The Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his army, he has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh's officers were drowned in the sea. The deep waters have covered them. They sank to the depths like a stone. Blessed is a nation whose God is the Lord. That's what we're talking about. And by his grace, you and I are members of that nation. You watch the Israelites as they go over the desert and their enemies mock them and they say, look at those idiots going over the desert. They're going to croak. God brings water from the rock and bread from heaven and gives them sandals that don't wear out. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. This isn't theory, this isn't just theology that's spun out in some ivory tower. This is the story of the nation whose God is the Lord. And you and I, by God's grace, belong to that nation. Have you thought about that in this past week? You think about the people of Israel as they go over the Jordan River and once again, God commands nature. open up a way, and they see those monstrous walls of Jericho, and they see giants in the land and armies that are far superior to them. They say, how in the world are we going to handle this? And they walk around Jericho for seven days. And on the seventh day, the priests sound the trumpet, and the walls come down in a heap of ruin. Blessed is a nation whose God is the Lord. You and I are members of that nation. That's what Romans 8 is talking about when it says, all things work together for good. That there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Not nature, not the devil, nothing. Not walls, nothing. The Lord is our king. He is our warrior. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Once you were not a people, once I was not a part of God's people, but God in his grace brought us into his kingdom. That today we are in that kingdom that shall never fail. Nothing, not the desert of sin, not the walls that the devil puts in front of us, nothing and keep that kingdom from achieving its end. God has promised the promised land, that city whose maker and builder is the Lord. That will be achieved because we belong to the nation whose God is the Lord. You think about those things often. Do you read those stories to your children? about Joshua fitting the battle of Jericho and about Moses. You read them about Daniel. And do you remind them that we belong to that nation? That God is our God. That is our nation. That's what he says here. You who once were not a people now are citizens of that kingdom. But we're more than citizens. We are family members, verse 19. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and I better look at that a minute. Consequently, he says, you are no longer foreigners and aliens. But fellow citizens with the people, with God's people and members of God's household. To be a citizen is one thing. That's a privilege. But to be a member of the family is even deeper than that. You remember the story of Ruth. Ruth was one of those Gentile dogs who were not a people, who were living in darkness, without hope, without Christ, without God. And Gentile and Ruth, like Rahab, Way in the back of Israel's history, Ruth, like Rahab, had somehow, in the darkness of that Gentile world, somehow heard about the God of the Israelites and came to believe, by God's grace, that that God was the true God and that that nation had the answer and had the future and had the victory. And for the sake of that God and for the sake of that faith, she was willing to eat dirt to be a citizen of that nation. She was willing to glean the droppings of the reapers. She was willing to be on the outskirts, on the periphery of the nation, if only she could be part, even as a servant in that kingdom. But God didn't keep her on the outskirts. God brought her right into the royal family, into the very palace itself. God brought her to meet Boaz, the great grandfather of David. Boaz took off his coat and he wrapped it around her and his arms, too. She wasn't an outsider. She was brought into the family, the very family of Jesus Christ. You couldn't be more in than that. Now, sometimes I hear people talk about them and us in our church. Sometimes I hear them talk about insiders and outsiders. And sometimes I suppose because of the prominence of the Dutch names in this church that you might think that if you're not Dutch, you're not much. But if we ever give you that feeling, we apologize for it. No, we confess our sins because the vine doesn't begin with us. We too are foreigners and strangers. We too have been grafted in. We too once were not a people, but now with you have become the people of God, brought into his family. You and I may not consider ourselves outsiders. ever, I don't care what denomination you are in, if you're with the Lutherans, if half of them are German, don't consider yourself an outsider. You are part of the family of God through faith in Jesus Christ. That's what the Apostle John says in 1 John chapter 3, see what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God, and such we are. Ray Steadman, in a book that he wrote concerning this family membership, related an incident in a biography of Abraham Lincoln, an incident that related to the Civil War. When the president was involved, he said, with his cabinet in a very crucial meeting, they were in a cabinet room working out their grand strategy. And there came a knock on the door. And there stood little Willie, the president's 10-year-old son, wanting to see his father for a moment. And Abraham Lincoln laid aside all the duties of state and left the cabinet members cooling their heels while he saw what little Willie wanted. Willie outranked all the others. he had access to his Father. Now that's what Jesus was telling us when he taught us to pray. He said, when you go to God, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, when you go to the one before whom the angels bow and say, holy, holy, holy, when you go to the one who dwells in light approachable, you go in prayer and you say, Father, it's Willie. Willie was calling. You are part of the family of God. Do you think about that much? About what a blessing it is, what a joy to be part of that family. No wonder Paul keeps praying that we might know the riches of our inheritance. No wonder he goes off on a tangent. For who would have believed that we who were once not a people now are a people of God, and not only are a people of God, not only are citizens of a kingdom, but are sons and daughters of the living God, to the praise of his glorious grace. That's why Paul is so excited. But of course, it's even more than citizens. It's even more than family members. If we are family members, then of course, God the Father dwells with us. And if God the Father dwells with his family, then that family becomes a sanctuary, a temple. And that's exactly what Paul says in these verses. And not just a temple in general, not just a great big, you know, this massive building, but Paul is speaking about the sanctuary in the temple. that very inner spot that was called the Holy of Holies. You see that in verse 21, in him, he talks about being built on the foundation of the apostles with Christ as the chief cornerstone. And in verse 21, in him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, a Holy of Holies in the Lord. It was a place, the Holy of Holies was a place so sacred that only the chief priest might enter. It was a place where not even the priests might enter, it was where only the chief priests might enter and he might enter only after elaborate preparations and all of his garments had to be just so spotless pressed and everything had to be in a row and only then with the blood could the chief priest once a year go into that holy of holies. because that was God's place. That's where God lived. The apostle said, you are that kind of sanctuary. And then you begin to think about that. You begin to think about the glory of Solomon's temple, for example, built of exotic wood, gold, On gold, on gold. You think about the dedication of that Temple of Solomon and you picture in your mind people coming from all over. You see the musicians and the choirs and it is one glorious dedication. And King Solomon comes in. The crowd hushes and Solomon gets on his knees. He raises his hands in prayer to heaven, and God sends fire down. so that the people might know that he is living in that temple. And Solomon could not imagine that the God of heaven and earth, the God of heaven, who cannot be contained in the heavens, that that God would come down and dwell in Palestine and in Jerusalem and in that temple. There was no nation that was blessed like that. What an honor for the people of Israel. If we went there today, and if somehow or other we could still go to that temple, and in our minds we would remember all of the holiness of it, and we would be led from the from the court of the Gentiles up to the court of the Jews, and finally to pass the altar into the Holy of Holies. My, what reverence, what awe there would be to see where the curtain hung. We would visualize those angels that guarded the arch. We would whisper, I'm sure, in hushed voices, so reverent, so wholly a place. And if we could go to Palestine today and still find the cross standing, go to that cross and see some dark spots where the blood stained it. we probably would not dare to reach out our hands to touch it. But here in this auditorium, ahead of you, and next to you, and behind you, is a place more holy than that. It is the place where God himself dwells. It is in our hearts. It is a place that is holier, that is as holy as heaven itself. And that's why the Lord Jesus Christ could truly say, without any exaggeration at all, if you do it to the least of these, my brothers, you do it to me. How reverently we ought to approach one another. How reverently we ought to deal with each other. How tender we ought to be. How terrible to despise one of God's children. What an awful thing to despise the very temple of the living God. Have you thought about that in this past week? about the riches that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then how reverently we ought to live. You know, when we come to church, we don't bring our penthouse magazines. We don't curse and swear out in the narthex. We don't drape the communion table with erotic pictures. We don't entertain each other between the services with raunchy jokes. We don't have the organist play for us songs with lewd lyrics. This is the house of God. Then how much more ought we to take care of that temple of the living God that is right here, our hearts? For the glory of the Lord has left that temple built with brick and stone. and he has entered the sanctuary of our hearts. What kind of life ought we to live? What kind of holiness ought to be ours? What kind of praise that we who once were not a people, we who once could not even worship in the main assembly room of the temple, who were barred by warnings, that we who were once not allowed to enter the temple, now have become, by God's grace, the temple of the living God, to the praise of his glorious grace. Let's think about that, and let's think about it often, so that our praise will not be dull, and it will not be common, but it will be inspired by the love and the mercy and the grace of God. Amen. Father, we thank you today that you are so patient with us. Lord, you have showered us with the riches that we have in Jesus Christ, and we take it so for granted. We take it so for granted. We are not more excited about that than some of the common, everyday things in life. And so, Lord, we thank you that tonight we could reflect on the wonder of your mercy, on the wonder of your grace, of the wonder that you have seated us with Jesus Christ and adopted us as his children and blessed us with every spiritual blessing and given us your Spirit. is a down payment, a guarantee of our eternal life. Father, may our tongues be loosed. May our hearts begin to burn. And we pray for that day when the Lord Jesus Christ does come, when we will indeed praise you as you deserve and do so perfectly and eternally. Amen.