Ephesians 2:19-22 • Built Lord Tough
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles this morning at Ephesians 2, verses 19 through 22.
Ephesians 2, as we consider verses 19 through 22. Twenty-five years ago today, the Berlin Wall came down.
Do you remember? After decades of separation of east and west, the wall of hostility came down only two years after President Ronald Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." And it came down.
And you may remember the euphoria that followed as the East German government said, "Now our citizens can go into the west. They can go to freedom and how the crowds gathered and how they chipped away at the wall and pictures were taken and here is a piece."
And Samuel Parker to put you on the spot. You don't know that I'm going to ask you. I know he asked you to come up here. Come right up here, Samuel. Yes, you're in trouble. No, you're not.
Let other people touch a piece of the wall, okay? Here's the one thing. I want it back, okay? By the end of it, just let people touch it. Lots of people will not have been able to have a chance to touch the wall of hostility that was shattered.
But when it was shattered, as much as euphoria and joy was present, very soon a sobering reality hit.
Now what?
After all, one nation had advanced in thought, in economy, in culture, and the other nation was far behind. In fact, for the two nations to become one, the stronger nation, the stronger people had to assume the liabilities and the debts and the hostilities of the other nation.
People began to wonder, "How are we going to do this?" I mean, this wall that it seems so firm, mad out of concrete and stone, has crumbled, is any foundation now going to be strong enough to hold us both up.
We may not recognize it, but it was precisely the issue that the Apostle Paul was dealing with in the church at Ephesus. He is actually saying to people who have been separated by generations of hostility, anger, hatred, demography, diet, custom, habit, paganism, "You're going to be together now."
And people must be saying, "In my house," because remember, they were gathering in their own homes. "In my house? Those people are going to be in my house?"
Surely there was questions of what is going to hold us up? What foundation will keep people so dissimilar and distinct and with so many hatreds now together?
What now?
The Apostle Paul answers, it's Ephesians 2, verses 19 through 22. Let's stand together as we read of a new foundation for a new people of God.
Ephesians 2, 19, "So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, thank You for sending Christ to be our cornerstone, allowing us to build
not on our strength, not on our ideas, not on our goodness, but allowing us to build on the grace of God provided in Christ Jesus.
But that's hard because we're different.
And to be your church, we have to keep inviting more and more people with greater and greater differences that will be overcome by the grace that overwhelmed us.
How can we be such a people?
It is not within us unless your Spirit indwells and changes and energizes and fuels for the work of the gospel. And so we pray for that even now, that your Word would be at work in us by your Holy Spirit,
that we might be a church built on the foundation of Jesus Christ.
This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
Please be seated.
It's not so different really than when families are blended by the consequences of divorce or death or adoption. I mean, you can just hear it as new children come into a family where children have been.
"Dad, they don't look like us.
They don't know our TV shows.
They don't dress like us. They don't know the rules."
And other children now in the same household say, "Mom, we don't look like them.
We don't watch those shows.
We don't dress like them.
We don't know their rules.
We don't belong here."
How would you overcome that?
But that a father would kind of gather all the children onto the sofa and would look at them all and say, "You need to know something.
I love you all.
You are all dear to me."
It is what the apostle speaking for the Lord has us understand from the opening words of this passage. Verse 19, "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." The background is streaming right out of verse 18 that we looked at last week. "For through Him," that is through Christ, "we both, Jew and Gentile, have access in one spirit to the Father."
We've all been invited into the throne room. We may be from different backgrounds. We may be from different paths. We may even have sin and difficulty not just against God, but against one another in our lives. But we've all been given access into the presence of the Father.
And the consequence of verse 19 is the apostle simply says first, "You are no longer foreigners."
I recognize they are national distinctions here, but we still recognize what they are about. As many of you know, this last week I've been in Brazil, ministering to pastors there. And I flew into what is virtually a new airport, and the consequence was there are not signs in English yet.
So I go into the airport, I'm trying to find my way, and I've been all over the world, and it's not many times, you know, that only Portuguese is in front of me, and I'm trying to find my way. And there are not a lot of people around me. But you know, I've got enough of a ticket in front of me that I kind of read the gate that it indicates, and I went to my gate and sat there for a long time until people started boarding, and I started getting in line to board with other people, and I started looking at their tickets, and their ticket didn't look like my ticket.
And so I finally said to one of the people in line the place of the city that I was going to, "Go a-nya, go a-nya." And he went, "No."
Now I knew I was in real trouble. So I went to somebody who had a uniform, and I said, "Go a-nya," you know, and "gate."
Well the person looked at it and thought for a bit and said to me, "Not here."
Gate 20. It had changed since I had been given my ticket.
I went to gate 20.
Well it is true that the number that the person gave me had a 2 in it, but the number was not 20, it was 12.
I was a foreigner, and I knew what it meant to be a foreigner.
My language wouldn't work. And of course I've got all other kinds of questions. Those of you who have traveled internationally, you know, you wonder, "Is your money going to work?
If you get hurt, is your health insurance going to work?" Not just where you're, you suddenly feel precisely what the Apostle has already described for us, remember, in verse 12 of the same chapter. In Ephesians 2, 12, he is speaking to those who are now gathering under the banner of Christ and saying, "Remember that you were at that time," prior to Christ being your Lord, "at that time you were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world."
Well, I still felt God was with me, but I did feel pretty hopeless at a few moments. What would it be like to be in a world facing crisis and hurt and difficulty and simply saying, "You got no hope, and you got no God, because you are foreigners to the commonwealth of Israel, the people to whom the promises have come, and the promises of God have not been made to you." And now Paul says, "That's not the reality anymore." Those of you who gather under the banner of Jesus Christ in these little house churches, if you are willing to gather under the banner of Jesus Christ, you are no longer foreigners, but that's not the end of the story. He not only says, remember, verse 19, "You are no longer foreigners, strangers, and aliens, but you are fellow citizens." Now we're in a day and age in which we just kind of take for granted that being an American citizen is a privilege, but never on a day may we have felt what it means to be a citizen where otherwise you would have no hope.
I praise God that you as a church have prayed with me over the last year for a friend and former student of mine, Kenneth Bae, and the word came out this week that he is free from a North Korean prison. We praise God.
And I will write Kenneth and tell him of your prayers. I know the pressure that was on the North Korean government. You do too. Even though he was in a prison camp, even though he must have felt totally alone, the reality was he was an American citizen.
And even though it was a nation hostile to our government, they felt the pressure of holding one who had the privileges of the most powerful nation in the world.
And to be told he's a citizen meant that they had to pay attention, act carefully, and ultimately release him. It's not unlike what happened even in the Scriptures to the Apostle Paul, why he so much wants these who have formerly not been part of the Commonwealth of Israel to recognize they now have the status of citizens of Israel, members of the covenants of promise.
Do you remember what happened to Paul and Silas on the missionary journey in which they first visited Philippi?
They're going into the town and they're beginning to express the word of Jesus Christ. There is salvation in him and no other.
And following them along the streets as they preach, there is a girl who's a fortune teller.
And to mock them, she goes after them crying out at the top of her voice, "These men are from the most high God. These men are from the most high God."
Until finally the Apostle Paul has enough of it and he casts the demon out of her that is enabling her to tell fortunes, which of course is not to the economic advantage of her handlers.
When they get mad, they tell the crowds and the officials that these two Jewish missionaries are not honoring the gods of those people or the government of Rome. And so they are beaten publicly and thrown into prison.
Now even there, they are not without hope. Remember what they do at night?
They sing hymns to God until an earthquake releases them.
But they don't go anywhere except to the jailer's home who is converted by their testimony with his whole household. The next day of course as the earthquake has rocked the town and things are happening, city officials send word to the prison, let those guys go.
Do you remember what Paul says?
"Oh no you don't.
You had us beaten publicly and thrown into jail, yet we are what?
Roman citizens."
Suddenly the officials are terrified.
You're Roman citizens? That means you have the power and the protection of Rome. We didn't know that. Paul says, "Apologize then."
And they do because he has the protection of Rome.
Paul is saying to those who are gathering in these little house churches throughout ancient Ephesus despite the fact that they seem to be ostracized in their own community without prestige, he is actually saying, "You must recognize.
You are citizens of heaven."
So are you.
I recognize that there are times that we will face trial and difficulty, uncertainty. But Paul's point here is this, you do not exist in the world anymore without hope or without God.
Wherever you go, whether it be to a palace or to a prison, whether it be to a job you know or a job you're scared about losing, wherever you are, you are a citizen of heaven because you are in Christ Jesus. You have the power and the privileges of one who is working all things according to the counsel of his will. He will make this work in a way that is best for your eternity and the eternity of the lives that you touch because the power and the privileges of heaven are yours as citizens of God.
That's not the end of the story.
The end of verse 19 actually draws the circle of intimacy closer.
Paul says, "You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."
You are family now. This is not just the public ceremony where you're sworn in as a citizen of the nation. This really is the Apostle Paul gathering the children onto the sofans saying, "You're all part of the same family now."
Now I know that sounds kind of sweet and dear, but you must know how much it had been difficult to hear.
These are people who have been separated, some of them, by centuries of animosity.
They are of different former languages. They are of different former religions. They are of different former nationalities.
It's not just that they look different or come from different backgrounds.
They dress different.
According to Jewish standards, their diets are different, which means they smell different.
Their clothes are different. They have murdered each other's relations. They have enslaved each other's people. They hate each other.
And now Paul is saying, "In Christ Jesus, you're part of the same family." And it does not matter how distant you have been from the covenants of God. It does not matter how much you have disregarded one another or disregarded God himself. In Christ Jesus, God is your father. Christ is your brother. And the Holy Spirit indwells your heart. You are one now. You're part of the same family. And as much as I can say that to you logically, we do not feel it until we know what it means to be rejected and then be part of a family again.
Garrison Keeler tells a story whose details I do not all remember of a young woman in Lake Woebegone who tires of her strict and staid Lutheran background. And just to kind of get out from under the pressure of her community, she goes to New Orleans to live a wild life and enjoy the party.
And she does it, enjoy it for just a while until the revelry becomes routine.
And then to try to find some meeting and some relationship that will satisfy, she moves into an apartment with a young man.
And though the revelry has become routine for her, it has become an addiction for him.
He can't stop the partying. He can't stop the drinking. Every day he spends in front of the TV with the beer cans piling up around him.
Finally, one day she has enough.
She pays off the landlord and she leaves him asleep on the sofa and doesn't pick up the beer cans this day.
She goes back to her Minnesota community and becomes a waitress in a cafe trying to resume a normal life, but they whisper about her in the cafe when she walks past the tables.
She is a foreigner in her own town.
She hopes it will be different at Thanksgiving when she goes to the house where her family is.
But even there she feels like a stranger in her own home. She can hardly wait for the turkey to be consumed and the pie to be finished and the dishes to be cleaned so she can get out of there.
The dinner actually takes longer than she wished it would.
And as her parents and some friends are washing the dishes just to be courteous, she waits around a little bit, wanders into the living room, and aimlessly just has her hand land on the mantle of the fireplace.
And there feels something new.
A picture that was not there in her childhood, she looks at it. It's a picture of her.
It's a picture of her from her high school graduation. And there's a label on it. And she thinks to herself, "How strange to be labeled in your own house."
But then she reads the label.
Type out on her father's old Remington typewriter. Now for some of you, a typewriter is a thing... No, never mind.
The label says, "Our Lydia."
She's overwhelmed.
It is her father's statement to the world.
Though she has gone far, though she may have caused difficulty and shame for the family, she is still our Lydia. She said the three letters in the word "our" were like three diamonds.
Her father's declaration of the preciousness of his daughter stilted him. It did not matter the distance. It did not matter the wandering. It did not matter the embarrassment. That was still his daughter. He was declaring, "She is mine."
It is what God is doing here. He is through the Apostle Paul saying, "No longer are you foreigners. You're actually citizens of the covenant, promise, nation of God. And more than that, you are family now. You may feel you have gone too far. You may feel you don't fit. You may feel there's not a place for you here. It may be because of custom or habit or sin or look or nationality or whatever divides the people of the world, but the reality is for those who are in Jesus Christ, you are family now.
And God is saying to you and to me, what you must know above all of the things is that you are dear to God and to look across the eye and look across our differences even as we look in our community and sometimes we deal within our church itself and to say, "The reason that we are one is because we are one family in Christ Jesus. He has made us one."
Now that must be hard to accept, not just for us, but for the people of Paul's day as well. And so he keeps pressing into their hearts so that they'll really understand the consequences.
But into verse 19 where it says, "You are now members of the household of God." Members of the household, those four words in English, it's actually only one word in Greek.
It says, "You are house ones."
Well if you're house ones now, a question we'll always have is, "Well, how solid is the house?"
If my identity is now being inside this house, how solid and secure is this house? And what the apostle is saying to them is, "You are not just dear to God, but you are secure because of the work of Jesus Christ." How secure are we? Verse 20, "You are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets."
Now again you get Bible language, and so you wonder how significant is it that this house that these people are part of is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. What is the apostle saying?
God had written that He wanted you here long ago.
This isn't new. Remember we this summer looked at Psalm 117, "All nations praise Him. From the very beginning it, the promise came to Abraham, I will make you a father of many nations. All the nations of the earth shall be blessed by you." The understanding that the apostle wants us to know is that God long ago intended for these different kinds of people to come together. It's not an afterthought.
It's not an, "Oops, I didn't mean for them to get here." It was actually the intention, and so that we would know it, he wrote it down.
Some years ago when I was not your pastor but you were inviting me here, I told you the story of a pastor friend of mine.
He was pastoring at that time in Oklahoma, and he was in a small town and he said one day his son wrote his bicycle into the garage where dad was working on the car, and the son said to his dad, "Dad, there is a crazy lady in the field down the street."
Well my friend had been a pastor in a small town long enough that he knew that whenever there was a crazy lady in the field it was his job to go find out what was going on.
So he went. And by the time he got there, there were some police and some neighbors that had gathered around a young woman who was just collapsed in the field with a puppy in her arms.
And the policeman explained to the pastor, "She came in on the bus and she didn't have any money and this is as far as she got, and we tried to take her to the shelter, but the shelter won't take the dog.
And because she thought we were going to take the dog away, she ran.
She ran until she ran out of breath and she collapsed here in this field."
So now it was the pastor's turn.
"Sweetie, what's your name?"
"Mandy."
"Where are you from, Mandy?"
"Missouri."
"Your Mandy from Missouri?" said the pastor. "I've been expecting you. Your pastor, knowing you had some difficulties, put you on the bus and he wrote me a letter saying that you were coming. I thought it was tomorrow. I didn't know it was today." And she looked up in absolute shock. This couldn't possibly be true. She was in such trouble in the days that she was in. She didn't know where she was going, why she was getting on the bus that the pastor had put her on. So the pastor now in Oklahoma said, "No, look, I'll show you." He pulled the letter out of his pocket.
It's written right here. "I'm expecting you and we have a place for you.
Your family now, coming into a house whose foundation has been built on the apostles and prophets through the ages past right into the present. If you wonder, if I've got this background, if I've got that struggle, if I've got these things I'm… is there a place for me?" God says, "I wrote it down."
Long before you ever came here, it was God's intention to take people who were without God and without hope in the world and to bring them into the family of God. That was His intention.
And just so that we will know how firm was His intention, the apostle does not just say that this house is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, but that Christ, Jesus Himself, is the cornerstone.
In the ancient world, the size, even the shape of the cornerstone determined the architecture of the rest of the building.
If Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, then He is determining, shaping the nature of the house. And because we know who this Christ is, He is the one who is giving us access to the Father. We now begin to understand that the house that is being built is the house that God intends to take many different kinds of people. And its foundation is as solid as the rock of our salvation, Jesus Christ.
My son a few months ago sent me a… you see, he's been a pastor's kid for so long. He knows I'm always looking for illustrations.
So he sent me a news article and he said, "You can use this."
It was an account of a new cathedral that's being built in Christchurch, New Zealand.
This church is being built out of cardboard.
In 2011, there was an earthquake that destroyed the stone cathedral. 185 people died. Much of the town wiped out.
And as its hope, the town put together at least a temporary cathedral made out of cardboard tubes, meant to be solid, meant to be a place where people could come together.
Sadly, the first rain weakened some of the tubes and they had to be replaced, but they replaced them. Now I must tell you when I first read that story, I said, "I actually appreciate this, that people recognize that the foundation of a true church of Jesus Christ is not the architecture. It's not the building materials. It's the people of God in whom Christ dwells by His Spirit." And I was so encouraged that people actually believed that a cardboard church was still a building made by God.
But then I read these words.
The pastor was interviewed and he said, "Now that we have our cardboard church, we have a place for contemplation and concerts and art exhibitions."
And I thought to myself, "There's something missing here.
Where is the cornerstone?
Where is Christ? Oh, it's wonderful that you have a place for contemplation and to think quiet thoughts. It's wonderful that you have a place for music and the arts, but where is the gospel?"
I'm not making you judgment. I don't know what is preached there, but at least in the interview that was offered there, I began to recognize what people actually need to base their hope upon is not in cardboard or this architecture. The hope is in Jesus Christ, the one upon which we say, "When all my strength has failed, He's still strong. When all my qualifications are inadequate, He is the one upon whom the building of faith is made. My hope is upon Him. He is my cornerstone." It is the ancient message.
Already this day, you have repeated the words of Isaiah 28. "Thus says the Lord God, I am the one who has laid a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. Whoever believes in Him will not be dismayed, though your covenant with death is in effect, it shall be annulled, though you have a contract with hell, it will not stand." I love that. We have a cornerstone that means death and hell themselves cannot overcome the purposes of God in this place. You are family now. As family, what does that mean? My hope is not in my ability, not in my relationships. My hope is not cast away because of my past. My hope is not cast away because of my failures. My hope is not in me. My hope is in my cornerstone.
And that foundation is secure because it is from heaven itself. It is Jesus Christ.
The Lord said these words, "The contract you have with hell will not stand, for the Lord will rise to do His work." He did rise.
And when He did, He said, "Your hell is vanquished and your sin vanished."
Because you are built on a new foundation now. Not the foundation of your accomplishment, not the foundation of your background, but the foundation that is the blood of Christ that washes away sin and gives you a new beginning, a new start, and a firm foundation for whatever God calls you to do.
But now we have another question.
What do you mean what He calls me to do?
I mean, what if my weaknesses, my sin, my past are so great that I really cannot be used by God?
Then we need to recognize that the apostle is not only saying that you are dear to God
and secure in Him, but you are vital to His purposes.
Verse 21, the apostle says this, "This cornerstone is the one in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord."
First it's just a statement of process.
We are being joined together.
Now again, in Ephesus, so hard to believe, different ethnicities, different rules, different moral practices, different sexual practices, different dietary laws, different hatreds coming together.
And Paul says that was the intention to join you together for what purpose? Verse 22, "In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit."
Now there's a problem here.
There's a foundation, yes, that's Christ.
And now we're being told that on this foundation a temple will be built in which there's going to be the indwelling of the Spirit of God. Now that language for those who are Jews receiving this letter is very clear. I mean where is the place that a Jew would understand there is a temple that is indwelled by the Spirit of God?
The image that must be coming to their minds is either the Old Testament tabernacle or the New Testament Salamonic temple that has been made that people would recognize the place that when Solomon built his temple, the Shekinah glory of God descended with such power and magnitude, even the priests could not stay in the temple. The Spirit, the glory, the presence of God was in that place. And now, now there are these little bitty churches in ancient Ephesus just in people's homes and the Apostle is saying, "You are being built on a foundation whereby a temple will come where the Spirit of God will now dwell again."
People are just going, "You've got to be kidding me. I mean where are we going to get the materials for that? I mean we're just kind of these poor people and you know, commerce, many of us have left in order to actually be part of the church. We forsaken these pagan businesses. Where in the world are we going to get the money and the materials to build this temple that's built on Christ that rises up to heaven? Where in the world is that? Where are these stones going to come from?
What's the answer?
Look around you.
You're the stones.
We are those that God is using to build the temple in which He will dwell by His Spirit. And how the Apostle Peter says it, "As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." You yourselves are the living stones. I don't know how best to explain this, to talk either about the Bible or Star Trek, because this is the Borg, right? Right? Each one of you is a living stone. You all come together and it's a living thing. The whole thing is living because every stone, every piece of it is living too. But the greater point that the Apostle's making, this is what's happening as the Spirit indwells you. That everyone is not just being joined together, but being built together so that the stone and the Spirit will indwell this place. You know what's now being said?
Every single one in the church is vital to the Spirit's work.
It's ultimately what's overcoming all the prejudices and all the differences. Not only are you family, it's important that every one of you be here.
Sometimes there are new people who come into the church and they say, "I don't have the background. I don't have the maturity. I don't have the knowledge of all these other people." Do you recognize how important it is that you're here?
If only knowledgeable old people were here, anybody who was coming in and saying, "I don't belong there."
But if there are some people who say, "You know what? I was going that direction and God called me to this place and I found hope here. I'm now no longer without God or without hope in the world. I didn't have all the background of those people, but I've got a home here." The fact that there are no people and immature people and people without learning is actually giving others hope. And there are others of you who have been here for decades.
And there are some who have said, "I don't really think this faith is going to last. I don't think there's much that can be done that's really going to be solid in the world." There are people who just follow a fancy for a while and everybody falls away. And we need those people here who have been here for generations who are saying, "There is a solid rock on which we stand and it will support families in crisis and trial for generations." And we need those people too. And every person is vital to the purposes of God. I say that recognizing it can be really hard to believe at times.
Some of you are aware that, you know, my family's in a lot of transition right now. And I talked to my mother on the phone a few weeks ago and asked her about the church that she's attending. And as my father has passed away and before that they had moved to a different part of town where they were downsizing and they were finding what church that she would be attending.
And my mother said to me on the phone, "I found this wonderful church."
She said, "You know, it's a large church and it's full of all kinds of ministries. They're doing wonderful things throughout the whole city. It's just full of energy. I know I don't belong there."
I said, "Mom, what do you mean you don't belong there?" She says, "I'm 80. I'm old. I don't belong there." Now my mom listens to this and I have to apologize. "Mom, you really are 80." I mean, that… What was she saying?
There's not a place for me there.
They're just doing stuff for young people. They're just all wanting energy now. They're just trying to minister to other people.
You must know if there is life in you and prayer in you, you are vital to the purposes of God in this place.
If you are young and you have the ability to reach to people who are awful in their lifestyle and they will even listen to you because you once ran in their circles, maybe just weeks ago you ran in their circles. You are vital to the purposes of God.
If you're a family whose whole and your children are all bright and shiny and smiley, you are a hope for some people who say, "Can my family ever get together?" And some of you are in families that are in turmoil right now and you are seeking with the prayer of every night and the strength of every five of you being just to stay together and you're calling out to God. And there are families all around you just like that who are saying, "If you can call out to God, I'm going to call out to God like you have because you know the struggle I'm going through." We all have a purpose in the providential plan of God. Every single one of us is vital to his purposes because he has pulled us here, joined us together and he's building a temple in which he will dwell by his spirit so that the glory of God will be seen by everyone around us from all the backgrounds and places from which they come. I know it's easy for me to say, but even pastors need to hear it sometimes.
A few years ago, a friend of mine, a pastor ministering in another town, told me the story of an older woman who joined his church.
And just weeks after she had joined the church, she was diagnosed with a terminal cancer.
He did what pastors do. He visited her in the hospital.
And because she was a new believer and new in the church, she did not know how she was supposed to talk.
And so she was just honest.
And she said to the pastor, "I'm scared."
And so he said the words that pastors say, "Betty, I know you're scared, but you are dear to God and you are secure in Jesus Christ because your faith is built on him and you are vital to his purposes."
Even as he said the last, he wondered if it were true. After all, she was old and dying. How could she be vital to the purposes of God?
But then he began to hear the words he was saying.
He was a pastor who had led a church through transition. And part of the transition means that they had just built a new church, and in the building of that new church, they had made critical payments up until the last stages of construction and then the major contractor had skipped town and run away with the last amounts of money.
Now what did all the subcontractors do?
They put liens against the church, and the people were not allowed to occupy the church until they had in essence paid for it twice.
The pastor who had been so effective in transitioning and leading them from one part of town to another, leading them from one place of failure to now another place of cost, who did they blame for the extra payments?
They blamed the pastor.
I'm glad your church was built before I got here. But I must tell you, he was absolutely discouraged and wondered if he could stay in that church anymore.
And then he heard what he was saying.
Regardless of what the world thinks or the blame that is leveled, you are dear to God.
You are secure on the cornerstone, and you, dear pastor, are vital to his purposes. God was using the dying of a new older woman in the faith to minister to the heart of the pastor so that he would have the strength again to lead God's people.
If you can pray, if you can stand for God in a hard time, if you can say, "My hope is not in me, but in my cornerstone, Jesus Christ," you are dear to God.
And you are secure on Jesus Christ, and you are vital to his purposes.
This is what the Scriptures say, "The apostles and the prophets and Jesus Christ Himself,
our cornerstone." Father, so work the gospel into our hearts again that we the people call to be the church in which Christ will dwell and by his Spirit bring the glory of God into our community. So teach us the gospel. May we rejoice in it in our hearts, we who may be far away wonder if we have a place, wonder if you would receive us. Teach us the gospel that gave us welcome here. And now that we're family, make us a fountain of the message of the gospel. We are dear to God, secure on Jesus Christ, and vital to his purposes. May it be our hope and our message for the world about us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.