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Jason Henderson
Market Street Fellowship

Ephesians 2:20 - 22

Today I want to finally get back to our study of the book of Ephesians. It has been
quite a while since we departed from this study. In fact, it may have been so long
that a few of you who have been coming for a while dont even know that we started
the year with a goal of working our way through the book of Ephesians. I never
once thought that we would get through Ephesians in just one year, nor did I think
that we would actually stay on that course without taking several temporary
diversions. But we did start in January with the lose objective of trying to slowly
work our way through the epistle of Ephesians.

We made it through chapter one and most of chapter two. We stopped in the end of
September after talking about Ephesians 2:13 18 the reality that He Himself is
our peace. Hopefully most of you recall that message.

Today I want to try to works towards Ephesians 2:20 22. I say work towards
because I will be taking a round-about way of getting there. Ive had a couple things
on my heart recently having to do with creation, the kingdom and the priesthood,
purpose, etcand I wasnt sure what to share about. Then it struck me that our next
verse in Ephesians is such an enormous reality with so much Old Covenant testimony
behind it that I could probably smash together all of my hearts rabbit trails into
these three verses. I tried to do thatbut somehow it ended up as more of a an
advertisement for the Old Testament.

It may sound strange or unnecessary to advertise the Old Testament, but I thought
it would be good to remind us of its purpose and significance as we look at this verse
in Ephesians. The salvation that we have is the fulfillment of all that God planned
before the foundation of the world and testified to for thousands of years. That may
sound like simplicity itself, but I guarantee that we dont really realize the weight of
that statement.

We have the fulfillment of what they were promised. But we cannot comprehend
what we have unless we come to know it as the realization or attainment of
what was promised. It would be a little like watching the last 30 seconds of a
movie and saying Boy, I appreciated that movie. That was fantastic!. How in the
world do you know? What exactly are you appreciating? Can you really appreciate
the ending of a story that you dont know?

Maybe its a bit like getting married to somebody that you have never met or talked
to. Rather than that marriage being the consummating of something that your heart
knows and has longed for, it would actually be the beginning of something that you
are entirely unfamiliar with. Or maybe you could compare it to jumping into a
marathon for the last quarter mile. Sure you arrived at the finished line, but there is
no appreciation or understanding of the journey that brought you there.
Those analogies are attempts to illustrate that if we try to understand a Scripture
like Ephesians 2:20-22 apart from deep, spirit given understanding of the eternal
purpose of God that it is satisfying, then how can we really value or understand it.
SoLets start by reading the verses, and then well rewind a few thousand years and
try to understand what weve just read.

Eph 2:20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole building,
being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also
are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

Let me just say something very quickly about verse 20. Im not going to focus on
that verse this morning. Im going to stick primarily with verses 21 and 22. But Ill
say a couple things about it in passing. Many in the church world today have made a
great deal out of this verse, claiming first of all that the church is built on the
foundation which IS the apostles and prophets, and then that leads nicely into a
second claim that they themselves are those apostles and prophets. It seems to be
a new fad in church world today to confer particularly these titles on ourselves in
order to feel spiritually significant or powerful.

I come from a background where a prophet is anybody that can tell you what is in
your sock drawer, and an apostle is any leader with a church over 1000 members, or
a leader who has been called an apostle by somebody with a church over 1000
people. And then of course there are bishops, and psalmists, and on and on we go
naming ourselves things that make us feel important. My point isnt to really show
that to be silly. I think that is self-evident. My point is only to say that regardless of
how you read this verse, it is not declaring the apostles and prophets to be the
foundation, but rather declaring Jesus Christ who is the cornerstone and foundation
of the apostles and prophets.

Enough on that. Its the last two verses that are going to have our attention today.
Very briefly, these verses encapsulate Gods eternal purpose and His view of
salvation. Here we have a people of God, reconciled to Him through the cross, come
to be His dwelling place and the instrument of His increase and glory.

Ok. Lets rewind. And in rewinding I want to examine some of our assumptions. I
want to force us to look at things that weve perhaps assumed to know without
understanding.

What was Gods view of salvation before He created? That is a question that Ive
come to ponder more and more. What did God have in His heart, in His view,
before He made the first thing? You all, of course, realize that purpose preceded
creation. There was intention and objective before there was the first drop of water
or the first breath of life. God had a view of the end from the beginning, and without
saying much about that, that view was of Christ who is the beginning and the end.
Christ the beginning the fullness that God beheld out from which all things were
made. Christ the end the goal, destination, and dwelling place into which all were
meant to come.

Well, what was Gods view of this plan? What was Gods perspective of this
salvation? I mentioned last week that our view of all things, including salvation,
including purpose, has to do primarily with a felt need. In other words, we create
our understanding of God based on how he meets some facet of our felt need. We
define salvation based on how we understand it to satisfy OUR felt need. We also
prefer sermons that are aimed at addressing and ministering to our felt needs. Let
me give you an example or two. If you were to ask most Christians what Gods
salvation was all about, I suppose many would probably say it is about forgiving
sins. It is about getting us off the road to hell. It is about redeeming us from our
path of self-destruction. It is about loving us and helping us get to heaven with
Him.

Its not that I am suggesting that these things are not true (if properly understood),
or that they are not realities found in Him. Its just that they dont describe Gods
purpose. They arent Gods view of salvation. God didnt create a problem only to
fix it. Do you see what I mean? God didnt make a mess only to clean it up. That
wouldnt be His purpose. He created all things with one thing in mind. And when His
creation decided to live by their own mind, and became cross-purposes with Him,
then He offered redemption to them unto His original purpose. Thats an incredibly
brief summary, but I think its accurate.

Part of that redemption is the forgiveness of your sin. Absolutely. Part of that
redemption is saving you from self-destruction. Yes. But your redemption was not
an end in itself. It is wonderful, but there is a greater purpose in mind. You were
saved unto a divine intention. I dont mean to play-down realities like forgiveness
of sin. That is an amazing part of our salvation in Christ. It is unspeakably good.
Its just that the body of Christ has a way of focusing on the things we think we
understand to the exclusion of what God would have us know. We put the spotlight
on those things that address felt needs, but we are happy to remain ignorant of the
end for which God has met that need. In other words, were content with a
miniature view of how God has met some need of the soul, and rarely bother
ourselves to look beyond that.

I guess thats what Im trying to have us do this morning to look beyond that. To
see beyond that. We were talking in the Hebrews group on Saturday about how we
are so content to remain in spiritual ignorance so long as we think that were
covered. God I dont know much about life and purposebut I do know Ive got the
bases covered. Im safe.

But sooner or later the heart of man has to face something. Well, we dont have to.
We can play the fool and pretend that ignorance is bliss. But ignorance is ignorance.
And when it comes to eternal, spiritual reality, ignorance is death. Anyway, if you
have any inkling to know the truth, if we have any drop of thankfulness for what
God has done in Christ, if we have a shred of desire to know Him or find our place in
His purposethen we have to face in to something. We have to face the fact that
God has gone to great lengths not only to procure salvation for us, but to give us an
approach to understanding that salvation through the things that He has made, the
institutions He has created, the covenants He has established, and the testimony
that He had recorded to the most minute detail.

Do you realize that the Old Testament, with all of its unending detail and description,
is Gods gracious attempt to try to put His plan and His salvation into display in such
a way that the human heart and mind can begin to approach Truth with a desire to
know Him? These things writes Paul in 1 Cor 10:11 were written for us upon
whom the end of that age has come.
Would there be any way that mankind could even begin to know God and the truth of
His way, His nature, His purpose, if God had not communicated something of this
through the stories written, the covenants recorded, the prophecies that he
preserved in what we have as the Old Testament. Even the meaning of the sayings
of Jesus I am the door, I am the bread of life, I am the way, etc. would be
unknowable mysteries unless they were understood as the fulfillment of all that God
had previously described in the testimony.

How kind and condescending for God to give us an approach to understanding what
He has done for us in Christ. A pattern by which we can better understand the
reality. How wonderful that God would spend thousands years perfecting a
testimony of what He desired to give us, and in fact, what has been fully
accomplished and realized in Christ. And how strange it must be to Him that we
often consider it the boring part of the Bible. We dont want to look there
to gain His comprehension of what we have here. Wed rather remain
ignorant. Worse than that, wed rather imagine it for ourselves.

Im saying all of this in order to introduce what I want to spend some time talking
about. Personally speaking, I very much want to lay down my understanding of
salvation and exchange it for His. I want to know as I am known. I want Gods big
picture to be so much bigger in me than my little imagination. Ephesians 2:20-22 is
about Gods big picture.

When you are looking at the Old Testament, or the testimony as I like to call it
because that is how I understand it to functionthere are several ways to summarize
the major types and shadows of salvation in Christ. For instance, I have in the past,
given an overview of the testimony by showing it to describe an old man, an old
creation, and an old covenant that come to an end in the cross where God makes all
things new. A new man, a new creation as His eternal abode, and a new covenant
whereby he relates to all who are in this New Man Christ. If you werent here for
that, that was the eight-part Salvation series that I did about a year ago.

It is not difficult to see and summarize Gods dealings in the Old Testament along
these lines. Another way you could summarize the Old Testament would be to
demonstrate that all things written pertain to these three things: the wrong man,
the right man, and the increase and glory of the right man.

That may sound like an oversimplification of 4000 years of Gods dealing with man,
but so much of the Old Testament is precisely the demonstrating of this reality.
Right from the beginning you have one man seen in juxtaposition with another man.
One man represented in the tree of good and evil and another in the Tree of Life.
The first man chooses death. The first man believes a lie and seeks to live by His
knowledge of good and evil. This man falls from purpose, falls from glory, and
immediately God demonstrates the need for his destruction.

The first man believes the lie, and perpetuates it in himself. Out of his loins comes
the increase of himself. He is fruitful and multiplies and the Scriptures say that the
world is filled with violence, filled with corruption. God says all the thoughts and
intents of this man are only evil continually. This is the wrong man. The man who
lives by the lie and brings self and sin and death into everything he touches. And
the flood was one of the first demonstrations of what God understood about the end
of this man. This man must come to an end, be put away, and there must be the
commencement of something altogether new.
And as you read through the pages of your Old Testament, you see God speaking of
this end. You see God describing the putting away of this first man, this adamic
man, his judgment, his separation from any purpose or inheritance, and then the
wonderful coming of the second man. And more than his coming, His increase. Of
the increase of His government there shall be no end.

Im going somewhere with this, so stay with me. Im heading back to Ephesians
chapter 2, but like I said, Im taking the scenic route. The more we can see along
the way, the greater Ephesians 2 will look. So dont skip ahead.

Your Old Testament is the story of these two men. And youll notice that the wrong
man always comes first and is replaced by the right man. And then the right man
has his increase. The first is put away, and the second is established and multiplied.
The second fulfils purpose and is glorified. Weve looked at these before, but here
heres a few:

Cain and Able. Cain is clearly the wrong man the man of sin and death. He is the
first fruits of the lie. He kills for his own gain. He kills because his offering is not
acceptable to God. And when He is cast out of the presence of God, Able is replaced
by Seth who bears the lineage and birthright of the firstborn.

Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael is the man of the flesh. The wrong man. He is the
product of Abrahams unbelief. He is the creation of flesh trying to do the will of
God. He is cast away, and is replaced by Isaac. And all of Gods promises regarding
increase and greatness are bound up exclusively with this second son who God
calls Abrahams only son. It is through Isaac that God said He would multiply the
Seed exceedingly.

Jacob and Esau. Esau is displeasing to his parents. He joins himself to foreign
women. He discards his birthright for the passing pleasures of the earth. He does
not receive the fathers inheritance. Jacob, though a deceiver as a young man,
comes to live by faith. His name is changed to Israel, and he brings forth the
beginning of the increase promised to Abraham.

Saul and David. Saul is the king after mans own choice, and shows himself to be
ruled by anger, jealousy, and fear. He is a demonstration of the man who needs to
be put away. And in fact he is put away by God through Samuel and replaced by
David a man who depicts the New Man, the man after Gods heart. In David we
have another clear picture of increase and dominion and glory.

We could go on and on. Your Bible tells this story time and time again bringing out
more and more intentional details to illustrate what was coming in the cross of Jesus
Christ. But in each case you will see that the picture of salvation depicted in these
stories is not exactly how we want to preach it. If we could super-impose our
current understanding of salvation onto the Old Testament pages, and have them
become representative of our understanding of salvationthey would look very
different.

We would have Cain saying my punishment is more than I can bear, and then God
would sayyoure right. I forgive you, come back and live with me in the garden.
We would have Abraham crying out Oh God, why cant my son Ishmael live before
youand God would reply well, I guess you did your best. Hell doafter all, I am
a God of love. Maybe youre not following me. Im simply trying to make the point
that Gods eternal plan and purpose was not creating man, watching him fall, and
then forgiving him. Gods plan of salvation was the replacement of one seed with
Another through death, burial, and resurrection unto the increase and glorification of
the New.

Gods plan was not felt-need driven. It was purpose driven. It meets all
needs, but is so much bigger than fixing our problems. If Gods focus was on the
problem, he could have avoided it altogether by not creating. His heart was on His
purpose. This plan, this salvation was so much greater than meeting our felt needs,
forgiving sin-sick sinners, helping us out of a mess. Does he do all of this? Yes. Is
there anywhere else that needs are truly met? Of course not. But Gods dealings
with man are done with purpose in mind. And that purpose is not a pardon that
comes with a permit to a better place. Although Im getting ahead of myself,
that purpose is to make you into a living habitation, an eternal dwelling
place, a temple of Gods ever increasing glory. That is what Ephesians 2:20-
22 is all about.

And we could simply read it, but then we would miss all of the effort and time and
thought and care that went into detailing, promising, and testifying of what we now
have. We can just read the Bible verse, and say wow thats neatsomething to
think about during the next commercial.

We could have just read the verse today without going back into the Old Testament,
but we would not know what we were looking at. If we try to understand these
words of Paul apart from the multitude of verses, stories, ceremonies, commands,
and years of testimony that they fulfill, then we just cannot appreciate it.

How can a human being read words that tell you that God Almighty has made you
into His own sanctuary, the temple of His glory, the kingdom of His increase.how
can a human being read these words and respond appropriately? It is impossible to
know where to put such a statement. Do we stop long enough to even consider with
the natural mind what God is saying here? We obviously dont know what were
reading. We obviously dont apprehend even the smallest fraction of this reality or
we would be utterly speechless and undone. The fact that we can read a verse like
this and then put the Bible down, grab some bean dip and watch M.A.S.H. speaks
volumes of our comprehension.

Are you following me? Im not saying we like M.A.S.H too much. Im saying we
dont know what were reading. Im saying that words can be as shallow or as deep
as you have come to know the reality of which they speak. Im saying that these
words in Ephesians 2:20-22 will be virtually meaningless to you unless you know
them as the great consummation, the long awaited realization of what God has
always wanted. The grand achievement of His eternal purpose. In these 20 or 30
words, Paul gathers up 20 or 30 books of the Old Testament and says it is finished.

You see we are the kind, the nature, that is rejected for a better man. And though
we are crucified and judged in the body of Christ, nevertheless we live, yet not us,
but Christ lives in us. One kind judged put away, and yet there is life for usbut not
ours. Christ who lives in us. We have become the kingdom of His dominion. We
have become the land in which His Seed finds increase. We have become the temple
that bears His name and His glory. We have become oaks of His righteousness, the
planting of the Lord. We, having died with Him, have been raised with Him and we
are where the increase of His government will know no end.

We looked briefly at 1 Corinthians chapter 3 last week. We are the plant that is the
increase of His Seed. We are the building that is the enlargement of His foundation.
We are the temple that displays the glory of God. This is what Paul is gathering
describing in Ephesians 2:20 22. We are the dwelling place of God in the Spirit
that was made new by Christ to be filled with the true cloud of His presence.

God has been speaking of, testifying to, describing, promising this reality from the
beginning. If I had more time, I had planned to show that enormous amount of
material in the Old Testament that describes the priesthood and the kingdom speaks
to the same reality. Christ our High Priest. Christ our king.

Christ the High Priest bringing death and judgment to all of Israel in the Lamb. The
High priest who bears the judgment of the sons of Israel before the Lord continually.
The one who prepares the door in blood. The one who brings a people through the
death of the old into the eternal dwelling place of God where we stand reconciled,
joined, accepted, in Him.

But more than that. More than the end of the first in blood. More than the
acceptance of the second in righteousness. There is increase. There is
multiplication, expansion, spread, growth. The New Man has his increase in us. This
is the kingdom. And if we had time I could show you that the kingdom, as it is
typified in David, bears witness of the destruction of uncircumcised flesh, the
circumcision of what God calls dead and offensive, in order that His King can have
reign, dominion, glory and expression in you. The kingdom of God Jesus says is
not coming with outward signs to be observed. The kingdom of God is within you.

The priesthood is how we come to dwell with God and God with us. The kingdom is
the increase of this reality and relationship in and through us.

There is so much God has said, so much he has shown, so much he has promised
that speaks of what Paul claims in Ephesians 2:20 22 to be a now reality for us
Christ.

Exo 15:17 You will bring them in and plant them In the mountain of Your
inheritance, In the place, O LORD, which You have made For Your own dwelling,
The sanctuary, O LORD, which Your hands have established. 18 "The LORD shall
reign forever and ever."

Exodus 25:8 ~ Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I might dwell
among them

Exodus 29: 45-46 ~ I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God.
They shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land
of Egypt SO THAT I might dwell among them.

Zechariah 2:11 Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion; for behold I am
coming and will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord. Many nations will join
themselves to the Lord in that day and will become my people. Then I will dwell
in your midst
 Ezekiel 37:26 I will make a covenant of peace with them (peace with God?), it
will be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply
them, and will set My sanctuary in their midst forever. My dwelling place also will
be with them,; and I will be their God, and they will be My people.

Isaiah 66:1 Heaven is my throne and earth is My footstool. Where then is a

Here, in Ephesians 2:21-22 God has his answer. Here God has found his house.
God has found His people, His dwelling place, and the increase of His glory.