Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

It is a blessing to be here with you this morning whether in person or online.

Please take your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians 2, Ephesians 2.

We will be wrapping up this paramount chapter this morning - on Reformation Day - as we have been studying through Paul’s great explanation on the advent and make up of the church.

Paul told us in verses 1-10 how we became Christians and capped it with the promise that we have been created in Christ for good works.

Then, starting in verse 11, Paul launches into the explanation that we will complete our examination of this morning telling his readers how the church came into formation as the amalgamation of two previously estranged entities - and not simply estranged but hostile to one another.

There may have been those who still insisted on suggesting that this salvation may have only been available to the Jews and so Paul has drives home the point that this salvation was available to all men by discussing the Gentiles inclusion - in verse 13 he says “But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near”.

Through Christ the Jews and the Gentiles were both brought to salvation and made into one body.

Peace was established between man and man ultimately through the peace that was achieved between God and man.

They were not saved to merely be included into the nation of Israel.

Nor were they saved simply to remain as individuals.

The Ephesians, like Christians all over the world and down through the centuries, were saved to be a part of something.

They, like all of us, were saved to be a part of the church.

In these short verses that we’re going to look at this morning, Paul gives us one of the most succinct and poignant examples of what the church is to be and what we are all doing here.

The church is at a crossroads - and it would be very easy, and in fact it is something I will admit that I am guilty of, to stand here this morning and highlight all of the bad things that are happening.

If you watch the media, social media or current trends in Evangelical culture, it seems that we’ve traded our heritage for whatever the latest socially charged topic is - whether it is children at the border, becoming “woke”, putting an end to abortion or addressing the sexual revolution - for becoming what we were called to be.

We are challenged repeatedly with stories of sexual assaults and, in the case of the SBC, the investigations that are taking place with our executive committee.

We have issues like sermon stealing, outside entities doing much of the research and sermon preparation for celebrity pastors, women in the pulpit.

And those things are sad and things that we should talk about as we discuss the church.

But we shouldn’t forget the good things that are happening as well.

We shouldn’t forget the missionaries being sent abroad by the International Mission Board.

We shouldn’t forget the work being done by the Maddox family - training pastors in closed countries to be able to effectively handle the Word of God and when they are stateside working with trafficked girls and training people to work with this vulnerable and sadly increasing population.

The question for us this morning isn’t what is happening in the greater church - although we should be concerned and informed with that.

The question for us this morning is what are we doing here at Dishman? Are we merely treading water, marking time until Christ returns?

Are we slipping in our commitment and our desire for Him?

Or are we constantly trying to grow, are we becoming the church that Christ desires us to be as He seeks to reach Spokane Valley with the Gospel?

Throughout his writings, Paul addressed what the church is meant to be and I think a foundational passage is the one we’re going to look at this morning.

So please take your Bibles and turn to Ephesians 2:19-22 with me.

I’m going to read Ephesians 2:11-22 just to set the context.

Composition of the Church

Ephesians 2:19, Ephesians 2:11-12, Genesis 9:26-27

Paul is wrapping his statements up and he returns to the view that he had painted in verse 12 - even using the same words as if to point us back to those verses.

But you are no longer strangers and aliens.

“Strangers” and “aliens,” therefore, were outsiders without the full legal rights of citizens and often, at a more informal level, without social acceptance from the communities in which they lived.

Paul tells them you are no longer on the outside looking in.

They were once aliens from the nation of Israel and their status as God’s chosen people.

They were not entitled to the same status as Israel and they were strangers to the covenant that God had made with Israel.

Now though that status has been removed to the point that they aren’t even resident aliens but have achieved full citizenship.

The concept of citizenship and the privileges of citizenship are very much in the news today but the meaning of citizenship in America pales when compared to the meaning of citizenship for the Ephesians reading this letter.

I looked up the benefits of American citizenship and this is what I found - we can vote in federal elections, we generally get priority when bringing family members and children born abroad to the US, we can carry a US passport and get help overseas, we can get some federal jobs and be elected to governmental positions and we get to show our patriotism.

Citizenship in the ancient Roman world carried much greater significance.

Ancient lists of city residents, for example, ranked the privileges of full citizens (πολῖται) first, resident aliens (πάροικοι or κάτοικοι, katoikoi) next, and transient foreigners (ξένοι) last.

Only citizens could own property, vote, serve in the military or enter into a legal contract and get a fair trial.

Citizenship was generally only conferred at birth but could be purchased.

What Paul is saying to them here is that while you are Roman citizens, you have a higher citizenship that you are citizens with the saints - both those who are living with you as well as those who have gone before and that you are members of God’s household.

This is extraordinary.

Have you ever really contemplated just how amazing it is to be a citizen of God’s household?

It is important to recognize that this is not a new plan or a shift in plans because the original plan through Israel had failed.

This had always been God’s design.

Look back with me to Genesis 9.

Without going to deeply into the movement of peoples or the lineages discussed in Genesis 9 and 10 the people of Japheth, following the Tower of Babel incident, were scattered northward and settled in the Northern Mediterranean region and westward into what is now Europe.

They were the antecedents of the Gentiles to whom Paul was writing.

Genesis 11 tells us that it was through the line of Shem that Abraham was born.

The prophecy says “let Japheth dwell in the tents of Shem” - let the Gentiles dwell in the tents of the Israelites, the Jews.

All the way back to the time of Noah this citizenship that Paul is discussing had been in God’s plans - and even before that.

It is this citizenship that drives us here week after week - to sing songs of praise, to lift our hands in worship and to hear His Word preached because this is the closest we’re going to get to being home while here on earth.

Here’s the thing though - it’s not simply supposed to be a weekly gathering of the saints.

Mike Fabarez story - the church is open too much.

It is great that we can be available for groups like Bible Study Fellowship and The Rock and Salt and Light Debate club but it is also to our detriment as a church that our building is so available to outsiders.

We celebrate when we announce a new Bible study and we get 8-10 people to sign up.

In truth we should desire to be together so much that we lament not being able to get enough books not fear that we’ve bought too many.

The early church was together daily - the modern church has a challenge getting together once a week.

And every day He added to their number.

Why?

Because we aren’t just citizens, we’re also ambassadors.

I remember being in the Navy and every time we’d hit a foreign port there were two admonitions given to the crew.

The first was the prevalence of diseases in the port and the second was that we were ambassadors for the United States.

That our actions would reflect either poorly or beneficially on the view of the United States in that country.

And that’s the same view we should have as Christian citizens living here - because here we are strangers and aliens.

Our citizenship, our home is elsewhere and we are only sojourning here until we are called there…but our purpose here is to be ambassadors to what He is still doing in this place.

In order to be effective at that we have to come back to this place to grow and reconnect to what has gone before.

Now before I go on please understand me - I’m not saying that there is anything supernatural about our buildings.

They’re just buildings.

Nor is there anything supernatural about programs - the church is the gathering of the saints together.

A wise man once told me that it was time to teach our kids that the church is people not a building.

As beautiful a facility as we have - the church is this body of people gathered together, lifting their voices in worship as members of God’s household.

The church is not programs, and maturity does not happen through programming.

But it does happen through gatherings.

It can’t happen unless Christians are in the same room together, whether that’s a coffee shop down the street, a living room or one of the classrooms downstairs.

What we see in the New Testament is gatherings of believers - not simply for the sake of gathering but for the sake of challenging one another on to spiritual growth and good works.

And all of that is great - but we have to get the foundation right.

Construction of the Church

Ephesians 2:20-21, Philippians 2:6-11,

You see this is not just something we dreamed up over the last 100 years or even the last 200 years.

Paul goes on to say that we have been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and it is interesting that he chooses these two classes of people.

Now to be sure they are not the foundation of what we believe - it is their message that laid the foundation of what we believe.

Paul highlights two offices in the early church that were given the words of God to speak to the people.

The apostles were Christ’s messengers to the people following His resurrection.

The prophets were not only His messengers after His resurrection but also before His advent to earth the prophets told of His coming and called the people back to God when Israel went astray.

This foundation that has been laid has continued being built upon by centuries of preachers who have continued to faithfully teach the Word of God and to defend the truth when false teaching threatened the sanctity of the Gospel.

Men like Athanasius who stood against Arianism, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John and Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Lloyd Jones, R.C. Sproul, the list could go on and on but there are also longer lists of unnamed pastors who never wrote a book or have had their name at the head of major organizations but have faithfully labored at the Word week after week and year after year.

It has been said that “the best pastors in the world pastor small churches and no one has ever heard of them”.

Men like Lewis Steed who came here to Spokane Valley in 1953 with 40 other members to found Dishman First Baptist Church.

Within a year the church had grown to 156.

Then in 1969 with Pastor Carlton Flowers as the Senior Pastor and they occupied a new building in 1973.

This building.

Expansions in 2006 brought us into this current facility - but this church is more than just a building.

It is a ministry that has endured and flourished over the last 65 years.

The one consistent things among all of those men is the message they taught.

Charles Spurgeon once said “Whitefield and Wesley might preach the gospel better than I do, but they could not preach a better gospel.”