Ephesians 2:20-22
The Holy Temple
Last week we saw that Paul described the Church as a nation, and, a family. This week we are going to look at His 3rd metaphor for the Church in this passage: A Holy Temple.
In Manufacturing there is a term called WIP. WIP is an acronym and it stands for Work-in-Progress. You have raw materials, you have finished product ready to sell to your customer, and in between you have WIP. This is inventory that is being worked on and isn’t completed yet. It’s in the middle of production. It’s partly done, but, not completely done. It is WIP – a “work-in-progress”.
Jesus Christ has a WIP. He has a Work In Progress. It’s called the Church. He said in Matthew 18, “I will build my Church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” His project began on the day of Pentecost and He continues it to this day. He will not stop building the Church, He will continue to be at work, for Paul says in Philippians 1:6, “I know that He who began a good work in you will continue it until the day of Christ.”
Let us look at 3 Parts of this building: The Foundation, the Cornerstone, and the Living Stones.
A Foundation (v20a)
God has built a foundation for the Church. Every good building is built on a good foundation. The Sears Tower, now called the Willis Tower is the tallest building in North America at 1450 feet. When it was built in 1973 it was the tallest building in the world. A building like that couldn’t be that tall without a good foundation. The foundation is 100 feet deep and has 2M cubic feet of concrete. That is enough concrete to make a highway 8 lanes wide and 5 miles long, or, from our driveway to the Sternberg exit.
Why is a foundation so important? It provides t base for everything else that is going to be built on top of it. A foundation needs to be solid and strong so that the whole building doesn’t fall down. Jesus talked this way in Luke 6 when He said, “Jesus was talking about how you build your life – your life is like a building. What kind of foundation are you building your life on? Jesus stressed the importance of building on the Rock because it is solid.
Paul says here that when God began to build the Church He started with its foundation: the Apostles and the prophets. Paul says it is the Apostles and the Prophets who are the foundation. But what does he mean by that? He means two things. First, he means that they made up the first members of the Church and from their ministry the rest of the Church members would come in.
But second, he is referring to their teachings. The doctrines they taught are the authoritative foundations that the Church is built on. Everything that governs what we believe and how we live are contained in the teachings of the Apostle’s and Prophets. Paul said in 2 Timothy 1:13, “What you have heard from me keep as the pattern of sound teaching.” And he also said in 2 Timothy 2:2, “And the things you have heard me say …entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.”
In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul talks about the Church and the foundation of the Church. He says, “By the grace of God I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” He is saying that the doctrines that he taught concerning Jesus Christ were the foundation of everything that is taught and instructed in the life of the Church. All teaching in the NT grows on top of, and, out of, who Christ is.
You see, the teachings the Apostle’s and prophets gave were what they received directly from the Lord. They were not taught by men. They were the first generation, you might say. You can’t trace what they said any farther back to any man, because if you go back any further than them you go right to Jesus Christ. They were the first ones to whom He gave the responsibility to teach and preach, and, they were the one’s whom He gave revelation to.
A question that each Christian is bound to ask himself at some point is: Are there still Apostles and Prophets today? Does that kind of ministry still go on? The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Pope is an Apostle on the same level as Peter and actually is a successor of Peter. There are many in the Charismatic churches who claim to be apostles and prophets. Are they really? Are there Apostles and prophets still today?
This verse is a strong indicator that “No” there are not. Why? Because Paul is saying that the apostles and prophets were the foundation of the church. They were the ones whom God used in the beginning days of the Church. Just like a foundation is the first thing you construct when you build a building, God started His building – the Church – with the Apostles. The thing about foundations is that once you have completed it you’re done with it – and you move on to the rest of the building. It is built first, so that after it has been laid down the rest of the structure can be built.
The same is true with the foundation of the Church. Once it was finished, it was finished, and God moved on and began building the rest of the Church. The logical thought here is that all the believers who have come after the Apostles and Prophets are the part of the building that is being built on top of the foundation of the Apostles and prophets. (Think of this building. The foundation isn’t part of the walls – the walls are built on top of the foundation. The foundation isn’t part of the roof – the roof is built on the foundation after the foundation is already finished.)
In other words, the ministry of the Apostles and Prophets – those who composed the foundation - is completed. This indicates that the Apostles and prophets were in existence at the start of the Church and their purpose was to lay the foundation.
Another question here is: Who are the prophets mentioned here?
Prophets were teachers, like the Apostles, but Apostles and Prophets were not identical. There were many prophets who were not apostles. The apostles are distinctly different than the prophets in the fact that they were the immediate messengers of Christ, invested with infallible authority as teachers and supreme power as rulers of the church. That makes the difference between the apostle and the prophet. The prophets were a class of teachers who spoke by inspiration from time to time as God directed.
Prophets here is not a reference to OT prophets, but, to NT prophets. Why? First of all, there were prophets in the NT. In Acts 13:1 Luke says, “In the church at Antioch there were prophets..” In 1 Corinthians 12:28 Paul says God appointed first, Apostles, and second, prophets…” He was talking about the Church, not OT Israel. In the next verse Paul asks, “Are all prophets?”, and his point by asking the question is that no, God has appointed some, not all to be prophets for the Church. In 1 John 4:1 John says that “many false prophets have gone out into the world”. In other words, there are those that come to the Church speaking on behalf of God and there are those that come speaking on behalf of Satan. The Church has to distinguish.
Secondly, the prophets Paul mentions here in Ephesians were part of the foundation of the Church along with the Apostles. Notice that they are part of the same foundation as the Apostles. The Apostles are the foundation of the Church, not Israel. Therefore, if these Prophets are part of the same foundation as the Apostles then these Prophets are for the Church, not for national Israel.
A third reason why these Prophets are not OT Prophets is found in 3:5. Paul says these Prophets received the revelation of the mystery of the Church, along with the Apostles. The mystery wasn’t revealed until the time of the Apostles, therefore no OT prophet knew about this mystery called the Church. But Paul says God revealed it to the Apostles and prophets. These are NT prophets.
Fourthly, In 4:11 Paul says that Christ gave the Apostles and the prophets to the Church “to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up”. God gave them
What is that foundation of the Church? What is the point of this statement? It is this: that the doctrine taught by the Apostles and prophets became the foundation of the Church. Everything that the Church is built into is built on the teachings laid down by the Apostles and prophets.
We here at EFC exist to build on top of the foundation that has been laid. Our work is to build not only on top of the foundation, but according to the foundation. In other words, the substance and content of what we do is governed by what our foundation is, so that what we build matches what is built as our foundation. Does our teaching and our living correspond with what the Apostle’s taught? That is why we live by the NT where their teachings have been written down for us to carry out that mandate. Remember Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3 when he says, “But each one should be careful how he builds…because his work will be shown for what it is on the Day…” Let our work here be the kind of work Paul would be zealous for if he walked into our church.
A Chief Cornerstone (v20b)
Now the important thing about the Church’s foundation is that it has a chief cornerstone. And Paul says that the chief cornerstone is Jesus Christ. Jesus is referred to many times as a rock in Scripture. He is called the Living Stone, the Chosen & Precious Stone (1 Peter 2:4, 6). He is the Tested Stone (Isa. 28:16). He is the Capstone the Jews rejected and is now their Stumbling stone (Acts 4:11). He is the Crushing stone of Judgment for the Gentiles (Matt. 21:44). His Kingdom is the kingdom cut from stone (Dan. 2:34). And here in Ephesians 2:20 Paul says Jesus Himself is the chief cornerstone.
The word in the Greek for Chief Cornerstone is the word akrogoniaios. It literally means "at the tip of the angle." It refers to the capstone or binding stone that holds the whole structure together. It covered a right angle joining two walls. There was a man in the 1800’s named Sir Henry Layard, who was among many things an archeologist, who excavated the Biblical place of Nineveh. He found that on buildings that often the royal name was inscribed on the cornerstone. In the East the cornerstone was considered to be even more important than the foundation.
A cornerstone is extremely important to a building. The corner stone of a building had to be strong enough to support what was built on it, and it had to be precisely laid, because every other part of the structure was oriented to it. The stone which was placed in the corner, determined the lines of the whole building. Whereas the idea of foundation is important for support; the idea of the chief corner-stone is that of regulation or pattern. The purpose is for producing assimilation. The cornerstone thus functioned as the supporting stone, the stone that oriented all other stone, and the stone that unified of the entire building.
Jesus Christ perfectly fulfills each of these roles in God’s building, the new man, the body of Christ, the Church. He supports the whole Church, Colossians 1:17 says In Him all things hold together. But He also is the precise pattern by which the entire rest of the Church is lined up with. Each believer is brought into alignment with Jesus Christ and placed perfectly by Him. He gives the Church its shape and its form. He gives each member his or her place, and gives life and character to each one of us.
Everything else in the building is lined up by the cornerstone. This is the most important part of the building.
Is Jesus the cornerstone of the life you are building? Is He the first thing in your life? Is He the One that upholds your life? Do you build your life according to Him? He is the Chief Cornerstone of the Church and He is the Chief Cornerstone of every believer’s life.
Conclusion:
What is your foundation? What are you standing on?
Yesterday I had the chance to talk to someone about Christ. He was a great guy I liked him a lot. But eventually I asked him a question: “If you died today and God judged your life would you go to heaven?” He said absolutely not. I asked him how do you know? He said because he knows what he is like and God knows what he is like. But then he said, “God is working on me. I’m praying more, etc…” I asked him how he thinks he might be able to go to heaven someday. His answer was that he hoped that God could help him be a good enough person someday. His hope was not built on anything sure or solid. It was not a rock. He had a foundation built on sand.
Jesus Christ is the Rock of our salvation. He is the sure foundation and the Bible says anyone who puts their faith in Christ will never be shaken, never be ashamed, and never die. What are you standing on?
The Holy Temple
Last week we saw that Paul described the Church as a nation, and, a family. This week we are going to look at His 3rd metaphor for the Church in this passage: A Holy Temple.
In Manufacturing there is a term called WIP. WIP is an acronym and it stands for Work-in-Progress. You have raw materials, you have finished product ready to sell to your customer, and in between you have WIP. This is inventory that is being worked on and isn’t completed yet. It’s in the middle of production. It’s partly done, but, not completely done. It is WIP – a “work-in-progress”.
Jesus Christ has a WIP. He has a Work In Progress. It’s called the Church. He said in Matthew 18, “I will build my Church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” His project began on the day of Pentecost and He continues it to this day. He will not stop building the Church, He will continue to be at work, for Paul says in Philippians 1:6, “I know that He who began a good work in you will continue it until the day of Christ.”
Let us look at 3 Parts of this building: The Foundation, the Cornerstone, and the Living Stones.
A Foundation (v20a)
God has built a foundation for the Church. Every good building is built on a good foundation. The Sears Tower, now called the Willis Tower is the tallest building in North America at 1450 feet. When it was built in 1973 it was the tallest building in the world. A building like that couldn’t be that tall without a good foundation. The foundation is 100 feet deep and has 2M cubic feet of concrete. That is enough concrete to make a highway 8 lanes wide and 5 miles long, or, from our driveway to the Sternberg exit.
Why is a foundation so important? It provides t base for everything else that is going to be built on top of it. A foundation needs to be solid and strong so that the whole building doesn’t fall down. Jesus talked this way in Luke 6 when He said, “Jesus was talking about how you build your life – your life is like a building. What kind of foundation are you building your life on? Jesus stressed the importance of building on the Rock because it is solid.
Paul says here that when God began to build the Church He started with its foundation: the Apostles and the prophets. Paul says it is the Apostles and the Prophets who are the foundation. But what does he mean by that? He means two things. First, he means that they made up the first members of the Church and from their ministry the rest of the Church members would come in.
But second, he is referring to their teachings. The doctrines they taught are the authoritative foundations that the Church is built on. Everything that governs what we believe and how we live are contained in the teachings of the Apostle’s and Prophets. Paul said in 2 Timothy 1:13, “What you have heard from me keep as the pattern of sound teaching.” And he also said in 2 Timothy 2:2, “And the things you have heard me say …entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.”
In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul talks about the Church and the foundation of the Church. He says, “By the grace of God I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” He is saying that the doctrines that he taught concerning Jesus Christ were the foundation of everything that is taught and instructed in the life of the Church. All teaching in the NT grows on top of, and, out of, who Christ is.
You see, the teachings the Apostle’s and prophets gave were what they received directly from the Lord. They were not taught by men. They were the first generation, you might say. You can’t trace what they said any farther back to any man, because if you go back any further than them you go right to Jesus Christ. They were the first ones to whom He gave the responsibility to teach and preach, and, they were the one’s whom He gave revelation to.
A question that each Christian is bound to ask himself at some point is: Are there still Apostles and Prophets today? Does that kind of ministry still go on? The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Pope is an Apostle on the same level as Peter and actually is a successor of Peter. There are many in the Charismatic churches who claim to be apostles and prophets. Are they really? Are there Apostles and prophets still today?
This verse is a strong indicator that “No” there are not. Why? Because Paul is saying that the apostles and prophets were the foundation of the church. They were the ones whom God used in the beginning days of the Church. Just like a foundation is the first thing you construct when you build a building, God started His building – the Church – with the Apostles. The thing about foundations is that once you have completed it you’re done with it – and you move on to the rest of the building. It is built first, so that after it has been laid down the rest of the structure can be built.
The same is true with the foundation of the Church. Once it was finished, it was finished, and God moved on and began building the rest of the Church. The logical thought here is that all the believers who have come after the Apostles and Prophets are the part of the building that is being built on top of the foundation of the Apostles and prophets. (Think of this building. The foundation isn’t part of the walls – the walls are built on top of the foundation. The foundation isn’t part of the roof – the roof is built on the foundation after the foundation is already finished.)
In other words, the ministry of the Apostles and Prophets – those who composed the foundation - is completed. This indicates that the Apostles and prophets were in existence at the start of the Church and their purpose was to lay the foundation.
Another question here is: Who are the prophets mentioned here?
Prophets were teachers, like the Apostles, but Apostles and Prophets were not identical. There were many prophets who were not apostles. The apostles are distinctly different than the prophets in the fact that they were the immediate messengers of Christ, invested with infallible authority as teachers and supreme power as rulers of the church. That makes the difference between the apostle and the prophet. The prophets were a class of teachers who spoke by inspiration from time to time as God directed.
Prophets here is not a reference to OT prophets, but, to NT prophets. Why? First of all, there were prophets in the NT. In Acts 13:1 Luke says, “In the church at Antioch there were prophets..” In 1 Corinthians 12:28 Paul says God appointed first, Apostles, and second, prophets…” He was talking about the Church, not OT Israel. In the next verse Paul asks, “Are all prophets?”, and his point by asking the question is that no, God has appointed some, not all to be prophets for the Church. In 1 John 4:1 John says that “many false prophets have gone out into the world”. In other words, there are those that come to the Church speaking on behalf of God and there are those that come speaking on behalf of Satan. The Church has to distinguish.
Secondly, the prophets Paul mentions here in Ephesians were part of the foundation of the Church along with the Apostles. Notice that they are part of the same foundation as the Apostles. The Apostles are the foundation of the Church, not Israel. Therefore, if these Prophets are part of the same foundation as the Apostles then these Prophets are for the Church, not for national Israel.
A third reason why these Prophets are not OT Prophets is found in 3:5. Paul says these Prophets received the revelation of the mystery of the Church, along with the Apostles. The mystery wasn’t revealed until the time of the Apostles, therefore no OT prophet knew about this mystery called the Church. But Paul says God revealed it to the Apostles and prophets. These are NT prophets.
Fourthly, In 4:11 Paul says that Christ gave the Apostles and the prophets to the Church “to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up”. God gave them
What is that foundation of the Church? What is the point of this statement? It is this: that the doctrine taught by the Apostles and prophets became the foundation of the Church. Everything that the Church is built into is built on the teachings laid down by the Apostles and prophets.
We here at EFC exist to build on top of the foundation that has been laid. Our work is to build not only on top of the foundation, but according to the foundation. In other words, the substance and content of what we do is governed by what our foundation is, so that what we build matches what is built as our foundation. Does our teaching and our living correspond with what the Apostle’s taught? That is why we live by the NT where their teachings have been written down for us to carry out that mandate. Remember Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3 when he says, “But each one should be careful how he builds…because his work will be shown for what it is on the Day…” Let our work here be the kind of work Paul would be zealous for if he walked into our church.
A Chief Cornerstone (v20b)
Now the important thing about the Church’s foundation is that it has a chief cornerstone. And Paul says that the chief cornerstone is Jesus Christ. Jesus is referred to many times as a rock in Scripture. He is called the Living Stone, the Chosen & Precious Stone (1 Peter 2:4, 6). He is the Tested Stone (Isa. 28:16). He is the Capstone the Jews rejected and is now their Stumbling stone (Acts 4:11). He is the Crushing stone of Judgment for the Gentiles (Matt. 21:44). His Kingdom is the kingdom cut from stone (Dan. 2:34). And here in Ephesians 2:20 Paul says Jesus Himself is the chief cornerstone.
The word in the Greek for Chief Cornerstone is the word akrogoniaios. It literally means "at the tip of the angle." It refers to the capstone or binding stone that holds the whole structure together. It covered a right angle joining two walls. There was a man in the 1800’s named Sir Henry Layard, who was among many things an archeologist, who excavated the Biblical place of Nineveh. He found that on buildings that often the royal name was inscribed on the cornerstone. In the East the cornerstone was considered to be even more important than the foundation.
A cornerstone is extremely important to a building. The corner stone of a building had to be strong enough to support what was built on it, and it had to be precisely laid, because every other part of the structure was oriented to it. The stone which was placed in the corner, determined the lines of the whole building. Whereas the idea of foundation is important for support; the idea of the chief corner-stone is that of regulation or pattern. The purpose is for producing assimilation. The cornerstone thus functioned as the supporting stone, the stone that oriented all other stone, and the stone that unified of the entire building.
Jesus Christ perfectly fulfills each of these roles in God’s building, the new man, the body of Christ, the Church. He supports the whole Church, Colossians 1:17 says In Him all things hold together. But He also is the precise pattern by which the entire rest of the Church is lined up with. Each believer is brought into alignment with Jesus Christ and placed perfectly by Him. He gives the Church its shape and its form. He gives each member his or her place, and gives life and character to each one of us.
Everything else in the building is lined up by the cornerstone. This is the most important part of the building.
Is Jesus the cornerstone of the life you are building? Is He the first thing in your life? Is He the One that upholds your life? Do you build your life according to Him? He is the Chief Cornerstone of the Church and He is the Chief Cornerstone of every believer’s life.
Conclusion:
What is your foundation? What are you standing on?
Yesterday I had the chance to talk to someone about Christ. He was a great guy I liked him a lot. But eventually I asked him a question: “If you died today and God judged your life would you go to heaven?” He said absolutely not. I asked him how do you know? He said because he knows what he is like and God knows what he is like. But then he said, “God is working on me. I’m praying more, etc…” I asked him how he thinks he might be able to go to heaven someday. His answer was that he hoped that God could help him be a good enough person someday. His hope was not built on anything sure or solid. It was not a rock. He had a foundation built on sand.
Jesus Christ is the Rock of our salvation. He is the sure foundation and the Bible says anyone who puts their faith in Christ will never be shaken, never be ashamed, and never die. What are you standing on?
Comments
Post a Comment