We Are The Church

Ephesians 2:19-22

Ephesians 2:19–22 “So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.”

What do you think of when you think of “church”? Often we think of a building or a place that people meet for worship. The place itself is not the identity of the church, just as your house is not the identity of you or your family. It would be silly to say, “I”m going to go hang out with (NAME)” but instead of going to find them I just went to their house, even if they were not there.

I am able to hang out with someone at their house, but that’s is not who they are. That’s just where they may be located. They can be at a bunch of different places. Their house is just one place they can be found.

It’s also not correct to say since there are a bunch of places to hangout I don’t actually have to be in the same place as them. “Since I don’t have to meet at their house, I can go where I want and do what I want and we are both still hanging out.”

You can’t be alone and also be in community. These are both common ways that we can have a distorted view of church. Here’s a definition:

The church is not a place, and it is not done alone. The church is a gathering of a community of believers.

There are so many people that I have heard in my life that have used the excuse that since God is not confined to the four walls of the church they can skip the Sunday or Wednesdays to go hunting, play sports, or stay at home since they can have church right where they are at.

While it is true that you can have church in your living room, or in nature, or on a football field, most of the time when people use this excuse they leave out the most important detail — other people! This mentality is dangerous because it feeds into the isolated and “Me-Centric” lifestyle that the culture we live in wants us to believe is the right way to live our lives. And then we wonder why this generation is the most lonely and isolated generation, even with all of the connections that we have through the internet. We are constantly pulling ourselves away from real, physical community.

We were designed for community. “It is not good for man to be alone…” From the beginning of creation God has designed us for relationships with each other.

On the other side, some people focus so much on the building where thee church meets that they forget the people that gather there are really what makes the church, church. I don’t believe this is as common as it used to be, but I remember people getting so upset about what color the carpet should be and losing their minds when it was brought up that we should remove the organ that no one had played in years.

The focus was on the building, not the people. Today we see this more in trying to be an “Instagram worthy” church and have all of the trendy decor and designs yet lacking in discipling and caring for the members that attend.

But finding our identity as the church helps ground us in what is most important — our relationship with God and our relationship with others. Let’s take a look at the verses we read a little deeper and see if we can learn some truths about the church.

Jesus is the rock on which the church rests.

In verse 20, Paul talks about Christians being God’s house built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets and the cornerstone being Jesus. So what is a cornerstone?

A cornerstone is the first and most important stone laid in a new building. It ensures a straight and level foundation of whatever is being built. If you get the cornerstone wrong, you get the whole thing wrong. And what happens to a building that isn’t built well? It falls.

Any organization or “church” that doesn’t have Jesus as the foundation is not a building you want to be caught standing in. We must set Jesus as the first stone in order to build our lives around Him. If you have not believed in Jesus then it doesn’t matter how often you attend church events, you are not a part of the church. I’m not saying that just to be exclusive, I’m saying this because the foundation of the church is Jesus, and if you don’t share that foundation then you are not a part of the same building. You are merely spectating the church from the outside.

If that is you tonight, I want you to know that Jesus doesn’t want you to be on the outside. He wants you to be a part of the family. There is nothing you have done, there is nothing about the family you grew up in, there is nothing about how much you know that keeps you from entering the family of God but placing your faith in Jesus. Will you respond to that call tonight? Will you stop spectating from the outside and join what Jesus is doing in and through His church? It just takes faith.

Paul continues by saying that we, the church, are carefully joined together in Jesus becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Now, the language of “temple” might seem a little strange to us since we don’t have the context that Paul’s audience would have had. The Jewish temple is a major aspect of how God interacted with His people and it’s worth us doing a little history lesson so we can see how revolutionary this concept is — that “we” are the temple.

So the first iteration of the temple was actually called the Tabernacle. It was a tent constructed to the exact specifications given to Moses by God. When they finished the work of building the Tabernacle, the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. This is where God dwelled for the Israelites. Later, King Solomon would build the first Temple, a permanent house in Jerusalem for the Lord. When the temple was complete, God filled the Temple, and this is where God dwelled. The Temple became the center of worship and sacrifice for the Jewish people.

Israel begins doing Israel things and because of their sin, God allows Babylon to conquer Jerusalem and in the process they destroy the Temple. After 70 years, Israel returns to Jerusalem and starts to rebuild the Temple. But something interesting happens. We don’t see the glory of the Lord filling the temple like we did before with the first Temple and the Tabernacle. Strange, right? Here’s where it gets interesting.

In the book of Haggai Chapter 2 we read about the building of the second temple. and how people were complaining that it was not as good as the first one. God responds to them and ensures them that soon His glory would fill the new Temple and, in fact, the future glory of this new Temple would surpass the old one! They would have been confused by this, because it didn’t have the gold that the first temple had, and it wasn’t as big as the first temple. Even later when they would do renovations to it, we still don’t see the glory of the Lord dwelling in the second Temple.

But get this, about 500 years later, Jesus would walk into this temple and fulfill God’s promise of bringing greater glory to the temple. Jesus was the greater glory.

There is a very popular passage of Scripture where Jesus goes into the Temple and flips over the tables because the people had turned the Temple into a marketplace, and Jesus rightfully found this disrespectful. When the people get mad at Jesus because of what He did, they question His authority and ask Him to perform a miracle if He really has the authority He says He has. Jesus responds to them and says this, “Destroy this Temple and I will rebuild it in three days.” The people thought that Jesus was talking about the physical temple, but He was talking about Himself. He was talking about His resurrection. Jesus tells us that He is the true temple.

Jesus, not a building or a temple, is the center of our worship.

The Israelites knew God to dwell in a temple or a tabernacle. This is where you went to worship, this is where you went to experience God. But John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.” The word “dwelt” literally comes from the word Tabernacle. God “tabernacled” among us.

The Temple was people making a home for God, but Jesus made it possible for God to make His home in us.

The Temple was a foreshadowing of God’s plan that the true temple would not be confined to a building or a tent, but would be found in the hearts of the ones who believe in Jesus.

Ephesians 2:22 “Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.”

So what does all of this mean for us? It means that church is not about a building, a style, or even a program—it’s about people, redeemed by Jesus, joined together by His Spirit, and built on the foundation of Christ Himself. The temple pointed forward to Jesus, and Jesus made a way for God to live in us, His people. That’s why Paul says we are God’s family, His house, His temple. When we gather, God is present. When we live in unity, God is glorified. And when we remember that we are the church, we keep the main thing the main thing: loving God, loving people, and showing the world that God now makes His home not in stone walls, but in living hearts.

The church is not where we go, it’s who we are.