God's Cornerstone
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Read the Blueprints
Read the Blueprints
When considering constructing a building or house, the best successes come when plans are followed. An entire team of people who understand the plans are able to gather together and read from those plans what the end vision will entail.
However, there are times when people attempt construction without taking the time to read the plans, consult the engineers, and go back to the blueprints when problems arise.
I know for myself that the stereotype of plowing through without reading the plans has happened. It has often ended with much rework or deconstructing what has been built to rebuild.
My son does not blindly attempt to build without following the blueprints. For his birthday, he received multiple Lego building kits. Within those kits come the directions to build properly. He is insistent upon following each direction and build the project to make it exactly what the designer intended.
We Must Build a Firm Foundation
We Must Build a Firm Foundation
We can look around our town and recognize long lasting buildings built on good foundations. Those that have withstood many years of storms, battering, abuse and general use are the ones with a foundation engineered to last.
We envision our homes being a place of refuge, safety, and it must last our entire lives. Our children desire to know they have an investment in the future of our homes and want to have a place to reside.
In constructing our homes, the land surveyed must be able to withstand the weight of the building and anything that comes against that building. Therefore, the foundation of the building is the most important part of the building. Even if the upper part of the building is torn away, if the foundation is firm, rebuilding upon the foundation is possible.
Jesus is the Foundation for Eternity
Jesus is the Foundation for Eternity
For those of us searching for the eternal home where we desire to dwell, it is with Christ. Not only is He the tree of life giving us the life we need to survive eternally but the entire building rests on Him.
Our entire salvation rests on Him
Our entire mission rests in Him
He must be so strong to withstand all the weight of the world to endure eternally what we are being built into.
Our Cornerstone is Christ
Our Cornerstone is Christ
And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near;
Preaching peace to the enemies of God is how Christ begins adding to the building of the Holy Temple. Those who were close were the ones who already had acknowledged God was Holy. However, there is no mention of Jesus preaching in Ephesus. His travels did not take Him to this city to preach to those who were “far away” or Gentiles.
Instead, Paul is saying that through the enabling of the Holy Spirit, the messengers of God are capable of preaching the same peace to those willing to listen.
for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.
The word Trinity does not appear in the Bible but here is a reference to the son, “Him”, the one “Spirit” who gives access to the “Father”. By our hope in what Christ has accomplished, we gain access to the heavenly realms by way of the Spirit who testifies about Jesus (John 15:26).
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household,
How can we be separated from one another if we are being built into the same unified country of believers?
Paul emphasizes that those who place their hope and faith in Jesus Christ are no longer foreign enemies to God.
They have become citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
They are now know by God, neither stranger or alien.
They belong to God’s house.
Hamilton responds here that people who recognize they are no longer strangers who now belong to the country of heaven along with their current condition may not physically change. However, their identification is now holding dual citizenship as they live in a strange world opposed to God while reaching back out to those who are still enemies to God.
The foundation of peace rests solely upon Jesus Christ.
having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone,
No matter who is doing the preaching, they must adhere to the fact that all rests upon Jesus Christ. He is the foundation of the world (1 Cor. 3:11).
All apostles, prophets of old and preachers today must adhere to Jesus Christ as the foundation of the church.
in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord,
Arguments throughout the ages are easy to recognize between people who claim they are the only ones with access to the Lord.
How a building grows together in the eyes of God is that it is a Holy Temple. Not one that is divided against itself and destroying itself from within.
The struggle has always been recognized between different nations, religions, and even within the Christian denominations.
Where we struggle to identify how exactly the end building will look, there is no denial the foundation is upon Christ.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 2017. Ephesians. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Accessed August 7, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.
in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
Your spirit is being deconstructed to build a Holy Temple glorifying the Lord.
Hamilton reminds the church that growth in numbers is no substitute for growth in holiness. We forget at times how Holy God is and that He desires to dwell in a place of holiness.
This is an important aspect to the building of the temple upon the sacrifices of Jesus Christ.
Peace has been established through Christ in order that God may reside in the building. No longer does He look upon the temple as a place where sacrifices need to be made yearly to dwell with his people. But with our
God is the Master Mason
God is the Master Mason
Man often thinks he is the one who builds the world around him the way he desires. Control rests for him in building the world around him and then places God in his life where he sees fit.
You may go through life adding bits and pieces of God to your life. You may have taken parts of the Bible and applied them as good messages which help you throughout your day.
Paul’s message to the Ephesians is for you today. For you to recognize there is only one foundation for the Holy Temple of the Lord and that is Jesus Christ.
If you are building something other than that for yourself, you are building your building on something that will be washed away.
For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ was the foundation that God had envisioned for the world from before the beginning of our world. While we are to work alongside God in having dominion over His creation (Gen. 1:28), the grafting of branches onto the tree is grafting those dead branches onto the tree of life in Christ.
It is allowing God to chisel the things off of your life to have you placed perfectly into the building of His Holy Temple.
It is also not for your glory but for God’s. God is not being fitted into our temple. We are collectively chiseled to fit into His body.
God’s Holy Temple is a Turnkey Project
God’s Holy Temple is a Turnkey Project
Where the church works to add to the building through its own works it often forgets who is the master builder.
Matthew 16:18 (NASB95)
“I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
Men and women do not build the body of the church.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”
We the church must recognize that God is the one who adds the stones to His building. He carves out perfectly what will fit together in His house. Not only that but He sees the end of what is being created.
His work is complete in Christ.
There is nothing in this world that can stand against the power of God.
Cornerstone or Capstone?
Cornerstone or Capstone?
Our hope also rests in the fact that Jesus Christ is both the foundation of the world and the capstone yet to come.
If one were to look at the great buildings of the world they would recognize the pinnacle of achievement is that which rests at the top. We look to our own churches and recognize the steeples pointing heavenward in symbolic recognition of our own capstones.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is missing its capstone. There are many stories as to what was there and what may have happened to it. It goes to show the world that even the megalithic structures that man has built over the years is susceptible to decay.
Some commentators conclude the scriptures are unclear whether the language says that Jesus is the cornerstone, the foundation block which everything rests upon or the capstone, the lynchpin holding the entire building together.
Jesus is both the Cornerstone and Capstone
Jesus is both the Cornerstone and Capstone
Jesus is the lynchpin or keystone holding the entire building together (Hamilton, 2017). Without Christ holding the church together, it would falter. When churches, people, and nations proclaim the deeds of Jesus and proclaim Him as Lord and Savior, they are building their hope upon nothing less than the eternally existing Alpha and Omega which lasts forever.
Hamilton, Ian. 2017. Ephesians. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books. Accessed August 7, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Alpha is the first letter of the greek alphabet and Omega is the last. However God declares that He is both the foundation or beginning (Rev. 1:8; 21:6) and the end (Rev. 22:13).
Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible Alpha and Omega
The first and last characters of the Greek alphabet. The statement “I am the alpha and omega” is attributed to God (Rev. 1:8; 21:6) and to Jesus (22:13), explained as “the beginning and the end” (21:6; 22:13) and “the first and the last” (1:17; 2:8; 22:13). Likely all three phrases allude to Isa. 44:6; 48:12, where Yahweh asserts his eternal transcendent greatness. “The alpha and the omega” designate Jesus Christ as the creator and the climax of the universe (cf. Rom. 11:36; Eph. 1:10).
Bibliography. A. König, The Eclipse of Christ in Eschatology (Grand Rapids, 1989), 23–31.