Sealed as the Temple (Current)

Sealed Week 2

Sealed as the Temple

Ephesians 2:11-22

Series Slide

Good morning and welcome to worship. For those that don’t know me, or I haven’t had the opportunity to meet, I’m Jay Fraze. I was the 2nd pastor of the Current service and now I have returned to First Corsicana as the Senior pastor after a decade of being gone. And I must say, it’s so good to be back home! It seems like old times with Bret leading and me preaching… except Bret’s hair’s a little lighter and mine is a little thinner… and we’re turned crooked… I used to preach over there looking at the doors… but I do love what you have done to the place here.

I look forward to getting to know you all, or renew our friendships from long ago… but right now, we are here to talk about our faith. Last week I kicked off a series where we are looking at our identity as followers of Christ. So, since most of you missed that intro, I am going to share it with you.

This new sermon series is called “Sealed” where we are talking about being marked, sealed, identified in Christ. It comes from the passage in Ephesians 1,

Ephesians 1:13

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,

Series Slide

Today, we live in a world that plays identity politics. I know, that’s a catch phrase for the Republicans and Democrats as they lob volleys back and forth at each other, but they all really do it… Independents, Green Party, Libertarian Party or whatever political stripe you want to claim. So often we find our identity in our political party and cast aspersions toward the other.

You see, I am an equal-opportunity offender. If you are a Republican – my goal is to offend… If you are a Democrat, my goal is to offend… why? – our identity should not be in politics, it should be in Jesus Christ… and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is offensive as we read in Scripture. It is exclusionary. It is exclusive. Jesus’ own words “I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” are offensive… or as Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 1:18, “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing and spiritually dead.” That doesn’t mean others are left out, all are welcome at God’s Table. “For God so loved the world, literally, the Cosmos – all of creation – that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. He didn’t send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17

That’s why I will throw rocks at everything we put our identity in other than Jesus Christ.

So, if we place our identity in our politics… OR… We claim our identity is in our social group or social standing in the community… OR…

We locate our identity in our sexuality, or gender, or race, or nationality… and yes, even our denomination, we are missing the boat.

These days, we place our identity in anything and everything, creating this dichotomy within our personality and separating ourselves from others. Then… we blast our newfound identity on social media and find ourselves in an echo chamber of that identity, AND, affirmed in the echo chamber of an algorithm designed to keep us addicted to a social media platform, we never see anything else and we end up lost in our own identity.

The real problem is this…

When we place our identity in anything other than God as revealed in Jesus Christ and experienced through the Holy Spirit, we are missing the abundant life that God created you and me for.

So, today we are looking at what it means to be marked with a seal as Paul said in Ephesians 1:13.

Let’s pause for a moment to think about what a seal is…

Seal

Ok, yes it’s a playful creature in the North Pacific. Maybe that’s a seal, maybe it’s a Sea Lion… but you get the point. I’ve watched videos of seals with SCUBA Divers cuddling up for a belly rub. They are cute, but that’s not the seal we are talking about.

And then there is a seal that keeps the wind and rain out.

Truck

One thing I’ve learned from owning a couple of different old cars through the years is, sometimes you have to replace the door seal to make sure the interior stays dry and the doors close well. But again, not the kind of seal we are talking about.

What we are talking about is more like the seal we see on a letter.

Letter

Today we’ve got lick-em and stick-em or peal and stick envelopes, but in years past, an envelope, or a letter was often sealed with a clay or wax seal. The use of a seal as a form of authentication actually dates back some 7500 years to the region that we think of as Babylon, or modern-day Iraq.

By the time Paul was writing to the Ephesians, a seal, or being marked with a seal, was known as a way of authenticating and identifying the author. When someone saw a seal of a Roman bureaucrat, they knew that it was official. A seal was and is today an identifying mark. It was often the signate ring of the dignitary… the signature… marking who and whose the letter is from and for. I often wear a signate ring, marked with the Alpha and Omega… it is who I belong to. It is a reminder of whose I am!

So, when Paul said we were marked with a seal of the Holy Spirit, what he was saying is that “…when you believe in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit.” (NLT)

Sermon slide

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be working our way through Ephesians looking at our identity in Christ and what it means to our daily life. Today, we are in Ephesians 2, with a focus on verses 11-22. So, open your Bibles to Ephesians 2 as we begin considering what it means to be identified as the Temple. So often, we think that My Body is the Temple… but I think Scripture tells us that it isn’t “my body,” I think scripture reminds us that collectively we are the Temple of God. So let’s dig in and see were Scripture leads us.

Ephesians 2:11-22

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his 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.

<Prayer>

Sermon Slide

As we get started thinking about this passage, it feels like we are missing something. Of course, we have the “Therefore” at the beginning, which refers to what Paul, the author, wrote in the verses before – “that you are saved by grace through faith, and not the result of anything you have done.” In other words, our salvation is in God’s hands, there is nothing we can do to gain or earn or receive salvation apart from the work that Jesus Christ did on the Cross. That’s a pretty big thing to miss, so now we’ve got that nailed down, but what else is missing?

Paul is alluding to the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem and all the Synagogues built all around the communities of Israel. The Temple had a specific construction with specific rules for each area, like who was allowed and who wasn’t.

Holy of Holies

The most holy place was called the Holy of Holies. Even the Holy of Holies was divided. The Holy Place was the innermost portion of the Temple where only the Priests could enter. Then, within this area, there was a Veil, a Curtain, that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. It’s believed that the Ark of the Covenant rested in this place. It was such a holy place, that a priest was elected annually to go in and offer sacrifices for the people. That priest offered 2 sacrifices, one for his own sins, then one for the sins of all the people of Israel. There are stories that the priest would have bells on his robe and a rope tied around his waist so if he quit moving and died in the presence of God, the other priests could drag him out of the Most Holy Place.

Court of Israel

Next was the court of Israel. This was the men’s court. Only Israelite Men who had completed the appropriate purification rituals were allowed into this area. Even though it was called the “Court of Israel” Israelite women were barred from entering this place, it’s the next most holy place in the Temple.

Court of the Women

The Court of the Women was outside of that. It was an open-air area surrounded by a walled porch that had gates where any ceremonially clean Israelite, male or female could enter and worship. At the gates, there was a warning sign to the Gentiles, that any Gentile entering that area would be responsible for their own death.

Beyond the court of the Women and farthest from the Holy of Holies was the Court of the Gentiles.

Court of the Gentiles

The court of the Gentiles was intended to be a place where any could come and worship the one true God. If you’ve read the Gospels, you know of this place. Do you remember in Matthew 21, Jesus came to the Temple with the Disciples and found Money Changers in the Temple? Well, they were set up here in the Court of Gentiles, turning this area into a marketplace where they were selling animals to be offered as sacrifices and exchanging money so the people could have their Half-Shekel to pay the Temple Tax.

Not only were the Gentiles barred from accessing the most holy places of the Temple, in 1st Century Judaism, the only place the Gentiles were allowed to worship had been turned into a marketplace for the Jews… So Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple, declaring that “The Father’s House was to be a House of Prayer.”

Sermon Slide

Now, that brings us back to today’s passage. We Gentiles – the ones the Jews called “The Uncircumcised” because they were “The Circumcised”, have been separated from the holiness of God. Even the design of the Temple was meant to keep us far from God.

The Jews were to be a light to the nations drawing others to God, but in 1st Century Judaism, they became exclusive and worked to keep people away from the Holiness of God. There are many reasons why that was the case, and in their mind, all the reasons were holy and righteous.

But regardless of what they thought, when Jesus died on the Cross, Matthew 27:51 tells us that the Temple Curtain, the area that separated the Most Holy Place from the people was torn from top to bottom. In essence, what that scripture was saying is that God is not contained behind the curtain and in the Temple. The presence of God was not limited to a place… Instead, through the salvific act of Jesus on the Cross, God’s presence is available to all.

The Israelite men and women and the Proselytes and the Gentiles all have the same access to God now as the Priests did.

In Jesus Christ, the barrier between people and God is removed, we are one in Christ, Jesus is our peace… Jesus is our uniter.

Think about the implications of that in the world today. If powers and principalities around the world would acknowledge the saving act of Jesus Christ and the fact that we are united in peace under Jesus, we would have no war. We would work together to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. We would work together to heal the sick.

But instead, we live in a society, a world, that seeks to place our identity in our nationality, in our politics, in our race… we seek to place our identity in anything but Jesus Christ and live in a world of hostility when Jesus came to offer and bring peace.

Verse 18 tells us that “through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” It is through Jesus’ act on the Cross that both Jew and non-Jew have access to the Father. What was a physical barrier has been removed, now we all have access through the Holy Spirit.

Then, Paul started sharing a common theme in his writings, that we are the Body of Christ… that we, the Body of Christ are God’s Temple now.

Ephesians 2:21-22

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.

When Jesus is the cornerstone of our building, we are the body of Christ, the very dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. You and I no longer need a physical Temple to go to in order to encounter the presence of God… when we gather together… anywhere… we are the Temple of God.

Sermon Slide

Jesus told us, “Where 2 or 3 are gathered, I am there in your midst.” When we, the assembly of believers gather together in worship… and study… and fellowship… and reach out in mission and ministry… when we gather, we become the very presence of the Holy Spirit. We are the Holy Place of God, the Most Holy Place, where the Spirit of God dwells!

Let me ask you this… when you gather together, at Timbers, or at The Bottle Cap, or at Brick Streets, or Marshalls, or even at the Warehouse… when you gather together, do people experience the Peace of the Body of Christ?

I guess another question is, do people recognize you as the Temple, the dwelling place of God?

Where you place your identity has an eternal impact. Your eternity and the eternity of the people you are called to reach… but that is a sermon for another time.

Would you pray with me?