Jeffrey C. Long

I preached the following sermon at Filer Mennonite Church on Sunday, April 24th, 2005

When I finished my teaching degree and knew that I was headed here to pastor I began thinking of how I could put to use my education in teaching in the work of ministry. The most significant lesson I learned in education that I felt needed to be improved in ministry was assessment. Testing has always been a part of teaching. But the no-child-left-behind act enacted by President Bush has put assessment at the forefront of education. No longer is it adequate to put material in front of students and hope they’ve learned. We are now assessing at every stage whether or not students are retaining the information they are being taught. There are very tangible consequences of assessment. The federal government is trying to be responsible with the dollars it spends on education. And so they want to make sure that if they have invested in education, that education has actually occurred. So in order to qualify for federal money schools have to be willing to meet the assessment requirements.

This is one area that I believe churches lack. Sermons are preached, Sunday school taught, but we don’t ever know if people have acquired the knowledge we have shared with them.

So, today, we’re taking a test.

Just kidding.

But in the spirit of assessment, I wanted to pause in our study of Ephesians chapter two and review what we’ve learned so far. If I was a college prof, this would be the review before the mid-term exam.

In our study we’ve been looking at individual verses in sections to understand what they mean. You might say we’ve been looking at the Bible through a microscope. The Bible looks different depending on whether you are looking at it through a microscope or a telescope. Greek scholars will write pages about a single word in the Bible. But today, we are looking at Ephesians through the telescope. Instead of looking at individual verses, we are stepping back and seeing what these first two chapters were about.

Paul’s main theme in the letter to the church in Ephesus is the miracle of the church.

The church is not a spiritual Kiwanis club. It is a miracle.

Ephesians 1:22 He put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things for the assembly, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

The church is the his body. The fullness of him who fills all in all.

When we assemble together, we are the living embodiment of Jesus in the world.

We come together because when we are here, Jesus is here.

And when we invite people to come, we are like Phillip when Nathanial asked if there was anything good that could come out of Nazareth. Phillip, who had already been around Jesus, said to Nathanial “Come and see.” That’s what we say to people when we invite them. “Come and see Jesus. When you see the church, you see Jesus.”

Then in Ephesians 2:19-22 Paul says:

So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, 20 being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone; 21 in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.

The Jewish temple was destroyed in AD 70. But God had already begun building a new temple. The church. A place that the spirit of God could come and live. The church is not a physical building. It is built on the cornerstone of Jesus, the foundation of the apostles and prophets, the living stones of you and I together. When we assemble together, God’s spirit lives here.

So, Ephesians is about the church. From the first 2 chapters, we learn about 4 building blocks for the church.

Praise

The first building block is that the church of God is made up of people praising God.



Ephesians 1:3-7 says Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ; 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without blemish before him in love; 5 having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire, 6 to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely bestowed favor on us in the Beloved, 7 in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

One of the most notable, but least studied, aspects of the 18th-century revivals that led to the rise of modern evangelicalism was the place of hymn-singing. In his very first report on the unusual religious stirrings in Northampton, Massachusetts from 1736, Jonathan Edwards noted that although his congregation had already learned the era’s new style of singing—”three parts of music, and the women a part by themselves”—the revival had worked an extraordinary musical effect:

“Our public praises were greatly enlivened, and God was served in our psalmody as in the beauties of holiness. There was scarce any part of divine worship wherein God’s saints among us had grace so drawn forth and their hearts lifted up, as in singing the praises of God.”

Citation: Mark Noll, “Singing the Lord’s Song,” Books & Culture (Jan/Feb 2004)

The church of God is made up of people praising God.

The hebrew word for bless is Baruk which means to kneel

Kneeling is an act of humility before a king. Showing him honor. Indicating that I am less then He is.

Each one of us has a responsibility to praise God with our words and with our actions.

The Old and New Testament are filled with examples of praising God.

I Chronicles 29

10 Therefore David blessed Yahweh before all the assembly; and David said, You are blessed, Yahweh, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever. 11 Yours, Yahweh, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, Yahweh, and you are exalted as head above all. 12 Both riches and honor come of you, and you rule over all; and in your hand is power and might; and it is in your hand to make great, and to give strength to all. 13 Now therefore, our God, we thank you, and praise your glorious name.

As I said, the church is not simply a spiritual Kiwanis club. While serving people is part of our charter, serving God is our chief task.

Like David, we bless God before all the assembly. We declare Him our God our father forever and ever. God is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory and the majest. For all that is in the heavens and in the earth is His.

Like Paul, we bless God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

We bless God because he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ;

We bless God because he chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world,

We bless God because he washed us clean from sin so that we would be holy and without blemish before him in love;

The church is foremost the place where our people gather to praise God.

David said to the assembly in verse 20, Now bless Yahweh your God.

And so I say to us as the church “bless Yahweh your God.”

Prayer

The second building block of The church of God is that the church is made of people of prayer.

Ephesians 1: 15 For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and the love which you have toward all the saints, 16 don’t cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers,

I’ve been rather taken with the imagery of being in the holy of holies with God. We read in Ephesians 2:14-18

14 For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, 15 having abolished in the flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace; 16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility thereby. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far off and to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.

But it is difficult to comprehend what it means to have access to the Holy of holies. We don’t have a modern day temple that we can compare it to. And we struggle to imagine what it might be like to be intimate with God.

I believe God brought to my remembrance Jesus’ teaching about prayer in Matthew chapter 6 as a way to imagine the holy of holies.

Matthew 6:5 “When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Most assuredly, I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But you, when you pray, enter into your inner chamber, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly

Inner chamber. Going to a private place where you are alone.

The holy of holies was a small room. And so, Jesus instructed us when we pray to go into a small room, shut the door and pray in secret.

It’s not exactly a small room, but the place that I go to pray is here in this sanctuary. It becomes the holy of holies for me.

So what do we do when we are there?

This is an interesting question because Jesus took away the work of the holy of holies. Previously, it was the job of the priest to go into the holy of holies once a year to offer sacrafice for the sins of the people of Israel.

So, there is no work to be done in the holy of holies.

What then are we to do?

Prayer is difficult for us Americans because we are driven to do more and prayer means sitting still, seemingly inactive.

Human doings. Not human beings.

According to the “Key Indicators of the Labour Market – 1999” Published by the International Labour Office,

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/steady-cn.htm

Workers in the United States put in the longest hours (among industrialized nations) on the job, nearly 2000 hours per capita in 1997. Assuming a 50 work week year, this is a not-very-shocking 40 hour work week.

But what is significant is that in the period from 1980, the annual working hours in the US has been steadily rising. It was 1883.4 hours in 1980, jumping to 1942.6 in 1990 and 1996 hours in 1997

In contrast, in Japan, workers in 1980 clocked an annual per capita 2121 hours per year, declined to 2031 hours in 1990, and 1889 hours in 1995 (year for which latest data is available). The US workers in that year clocked 1952.6 hours.

Canadian workers also saw their work schedules decline by more than a full work week during the last decades – with 1732 hours in 1996 compared to 1784 in 1980s.

We are working more. But is our quality of life improving?

George Barna says in his book “Boiling point”

Half of all adults concur that they are just too busy. This is the result of working more hours while trying to satisfy our seeminly insatiable thirst for excitement and newness. Three-quarters of us recognize that we like to try new experiences, which of course contributes to our exhaustion and inability to ease up. The pressure of juggling so many activities and responsibilities combined with the stress of fulfilling every-increasing productivity expectations wears us out. One study shows that Americans don’t even sleep the minimum number of hours required for the human body to renew itself. Most people feel as if they are falling farther behind-and are more fatigued than ever.

Boiling Point – George Barna p. 100

Compare the steady rise in work and leisure time to the number of people praying.

In 1991- 88%

In 2000 –83%

Boiling point – George Barna p. 213

We are working more. And praying less.



And so, when we pray, we feel like we must be accomplishing something, otherwise our time is wasted.



But what are we to do there? There’s no work to be done.

Practical:

First: Give thanks for the faith of our fellow Christians in the church.

A thankful spirit changes so much of the way we see things around us. Often times a sour attitude is a result of not being thankful for what God has given us.

Paul sets the example by being thankful for the faith of the fellow Christians in the church.

In your prayers, I challenge you to be thankful to God for the Christians in this church.

Second: Pray that our eyes would be opened that you may know what is the hope of his calling,

and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints

Those of us who’ve grown up in the church can have the problem of being inoculated against the power of the good news of Jesus. We’ve been around it so much, we’ve ceased to be amazed.

That’s why we need our eyes opened.

This church needs members who will go into a private place and pray that our eyes would be open to the hope of his calling. That we would know the riches of his glory.

Salvation

Third, the church is made up of those who have been saved from sinfulness to holiness.

Ephesians 2:1-10

1 You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience; 3 among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus; 8 for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, that no one would boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.

The church is a miracle because each one of it’s members knows that it has a life-long debt to it’s founder. None of us is here today because of our own standing in society. We aren’t a part of this group because of the good deeds we have done. We are here solely because one man chose to die for each of us so that while we were dead in our sins, He made us alive together with Him. Not from any works we have done. But by His grace.

Not of ourselves.

It is the gift of God.

The third building block of the church is that we are saved by grace. Each of us walks in humility because our debt was paid by someone other then ourselves.

The fourth building block of the church is the miracle of new relationships that we have with each other.

Ephesians 2:11-22says

Therefore remember that once you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “uncircumcision” by that which is called “circumcision,” (in the flesh, made by hands); 12 that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, 15 having abolished in the flesh the hostility, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man of the two, making peace; 16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility thereby. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far off and to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, 20 being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone; 21 in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.

Throughout all of history, mankind has not gotten along. Races have fought each other. Nations have fought each other. Families have fought each other.

The church is a miracle because races, nations and families come together. Enemies are reconciled.

I John 3:11 For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; 12 unlike Cain, who was of the evil one, and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because his works were evil, and his brother’s righteous. 13 Don’t be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death. 15 Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him. 16 By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers

The fourth building block for the church is love.

There should be love in the church. There should never be hate.

Now we have reviewed Ephesians. You are ready for the test. The test isn’t paper and pencil. It is how you use these four building blocks to build the church.

Praise God.

Pray

Humility of being saved

Love.