Sermon Tone Analysis

*Introduction*

I happened across a poem not long ago that I want to share with you this morning.

It illustrates a truth and presents a challenge regarding the subject before us for the next couple of weeks.

The poem goes like this.

I think that I shall never see

A Church that’s all it ought to be:

A Church whose members never stray

Beyond the Strait and Narrow Way:

A Church that has no empty pews,

Whose Pastor never has the blues,

A Church whose Deacons always deak,

And none is proud, and all are meek:

Where gossips never peddle lies,

Or make complaints or criticize;

Where all are always sweet and kind,

And all to other’s faults are blind.

Such perfect Churches there may be,

But none of them are known to me.

But still, we’ll work, and pray and plan,

To make our own the best we can.

Kind of cute, right?

But don’t fail to catch the last two lines – “But still we’ll work and pray and plan, To make our own the best we can.”

That’s our challenge folks.

Nothing is clearer in Scripture than the fact that we were not saved to operate in isolation.

That runs counter to the whole purpose of God in our salvation and in His ultimate purpose in the universe.

Remember that purpose as expressed in Ephesians 1:9-10: 9) making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10) as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

What is God’s ultimate purpose?

To unite all things in Christ.

He’s about peace – about bringing people together.

What is mind-boggling about the whole thing is that He plans to use the church, the body of Christ, to help accomplish that purpose.

God has saved us to be part of a group, to have corporate identity.

He expects our membership in the church universal – that body of all believers, past, present and future, to be reflected in our participation and membership in a local body of believers.

Church is a group activity where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts – where we have the high calling to reflect in our loving and caring relationships the character of our Triune God Himself.

To help us understand more fully what the church is all about, Paul gives us three pictures, three images, three perspectives on the church.

He has just driven home that point that these NT believers are neither Jew nor Gentile but a whole new entity – the body of Christ, the church.

Having established that principle, he is now ready to further enlighten us on this new entity using three illustrations – a country, a family and a temple.

Let’s begin our study of these examples.

*I.

The Church is a Country (We’re Equally Privileged)*

First of all, the church is a country.

Reading in Ephesians 2:19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints.

You can see right off the bat that those Gentile believers in Ephesus were not saved to stand alone, to be in isolation, to tough it out on their own.

Rather, right away he reminds them that they are fellow citizens with all the saints – imagery that brings to mind a city or country.

We are citizens together.

In fact, Paul’s point here really is that our new citizenship should take precedence over any former ethnic or national ties that existed.

Much as they loved and took their identity from their country, their new citizenship was far more important because it was eternal.

We have lost the emphasis on this in our day, but to be fellow citizens with the saints is a big deal.

Paul begins by stressing the unity that comes from being fellow-citizens of the same city.

And to make the point more graphic he first reminds them where they are coming from.

He says, “you are no longer strangers and aliens.”

Implication – you certainly were strangers and aliens in the past, but no more.

That’s all changed.

The word “stranger” refers to someone allowed in a country, but with no rights and privileges.

In the ancient world, even more than now, strangers were regarded with suspicion and a stigma was attached to them.

The question foremost in everyone’s mind was, “What is that foreigner doing in our city?”

In large cities today you can enter as a stranger and no one even knows you’re there, but not then.

A stranger arrived and everyone knew.

The word “alien” generally referred to a resident alien, someone who had established a bit more of a permanent residency, but still without citizenship and national rights.

The first is like a tourist; the second is like someone staying in a country on a residence visa.

Neither was especially welcome.

I well remember the first time I traveled to Venezuela on business.

We had an agent there who had offered to meet me at the airport, but I was coming in at a very late hour, and I assured him that I would be fine to take a cab to the hotel and we could meet the next morning.

However the experience turned out to be a bit more challenging.

First of all, I was in the middle of clearing customs when chaos broke loose.

There were suddenly large, aggressive German Shepherd dogs with very huge teeth everywhere, sniffing everything, clearly trained to identify drugs, but who knew what else might trigger them.

Men with automatic weapons were first milling through the crowd and then becoming quite animated and most of us were just looking for a way to be as inconspicuous as possible.

It turned out that some colonel in the national police was leaving the country with a stash of illegal drugs; he didn’t quite make it, but it was unnerving to others watching.

Once I finally got through customs, I waited for an hour for my luggage.

No luck.

Never came.

So now I was faced with trying to find out who to report to at the very late hour, how to communicate my loss given the very primitive condition of my Spanish and what to do about appropriate clothing for the next day.

Long story short, I finally got myself to a hotel, but luggage didn’t show up until I was arriving back at the airport to leave the country three days later.

Meantime, I had learned, it’s not much fun to be a foreigner in another country where you are not familiar with the customs, language and basically don’t know anyone.

Such had these Gentiles been in the past as strangers from the revelation of God coming through the nation of Israel.

But all that had changed.

Now, almost miraculously, they were fellow citizens with the saints.

Fellow citizens.

That is a changed condition.

Citizenship was an even greater source of pride in the ancient world than it is today.

In the Greco-Roman culture to which Paul was writing in Ephesus, citizenship was highly personal.

One’s city, or polis, provided one’s identity.

The city’s laws were a part of one’s being, its customs a source of pride.

Its inhabitants were one’s lifelong friends.

Now according to Paul’s testimony in Phil 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are all citizens together of heaven – it’s a citizenship we have now.

That’s really an amazing statement.

True believers have a figurative passport whose country of origin is marked “Heaven”.

How about that?

As proud as we are to be Americans, our heavenly citizenship should dwarf that in our minds.

There is much that this means, but let’s look briefly at two benefits that come from this common citizenship.

*A.

We have Common Placement*

The church is an entity whose home country is heaven, and as a member of this entity, we all have a place.

We are not homeless or second-class citizens in someone else’s homeland.

We have a place in the city of God.

We are fellow-citizens with every other saint, and hopefully that is a cherished position.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1847, but he immigrated with his family to Canada, then got a job teaching in the Boston School system.

From that time forward his home remained in America though he vacationed in Nova Scotia often and died there in retirement in 1922.

One his tombstone, this is the epitaph that he created for himself.

Alexander Graham Bell