Friend, who are the stone cutters in your life? Who is God using in this painful process of chipping off those rough edges so that you become all that you can be in the everlasting purpose of God? Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pick. And Colin, we’re in a series which is all about what the church is and why it matters. And as you’ve been saying, the church really is made up of a body of believers. It’s the body of Christ coming together. And some of us, well, maybe most of us, have a few rough edges. What about a lot of rough edges rather than just some, I think? And that’s the reality. We are sinners in the process of recovery. And therefore, when God brings us together and we’re like stones with rough edges, you know what? There are some uncomfortable moments. And maybe you have had an experience in which someone spoke to you in a way that was upsetting to you or something happened within the body of Christ that was discouraging or even disturbing to you. And you ask the question, where does that fit within the purpose of God? Well, you know what? If every one of us are like stones, that each are to be fitted into this great building, which is one of the pictures that Christ uses to speak of his church, it’s going to involve some knocking off the many rough edges that are there in our own lives and in our own character. And sometimes in the more difficult and even painful aspects of our human relationship, the hand of Jesus Christ can be discerned chipping away and shaping us to the purpose that he wants us to fulfil for his glory. I hope that seeing a vision of how Jesus is building his church is going to be helpful and encouraging to you. And if you have been offended or upset in some way, that in his grace, today’s message may even be a means of his healing for his glory. Well, we’re in Ephesians chapter two today with our message. I hope you’ll be able to join us. It’s entitled The Building. Here’s Colin. In any congregation of believers, you will find that there are things that are not yet done. There are things that are out of place. There are some things that need to be taken down. There are other things that need to be cleaned up. There are other things that are only roughed in and obviously need to be finished. It will always be like that until Jesus Christ comes. We are being built. Now, it is easy, you see, for the critic and the cynic to come into a local church and to kind of look at this and say, well, look at all this that’s not yet done, and look at all this that’s not yet complete, and so forth and so on. And to say, how can Jesus Christ be present in this? And the answer to that is that Jesus Christ is present in this as the builder. Here’s the cheer line for the builders. There is always chaos when the builders are at work, isn’t that right? Christ is present as the builder. Suppose you’re doing a big remodeling job in your house. You hire a builder and you say, let’s give him the key, let’s go away on vacation and let’s try and be away when the worst of it is going on. And so you give him the key, off you go for a week, and you say, well, we’ll see where we are when we come back. And you come back in a week and everything in your house is exactly as it was when you left it. What’s your conclusion? You say, the builder didn’t even show up. There’s no evidence that he’s even been here, not been inside the door. But if you come back and there are drop cloths over all the carpets, and there are ladders against the wall, and there is half a wall that is taken down, and there is drywall dust everywhere, and there’s a huge pile of junk that’s outside on the front of the pavement waiting to be picked up, you know that the builder is at work. Because it’s chaos. Now get that picture deep into your mind and it will help you to think in a new and a better way about the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is present as the builder and there is always chaos when the builder is at work. And the evidence of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in a local congregation of believers is not that everything is complete, but that everything is in process. The fact that the church feels often more like a building site than a showroom is evidence of the presence of the builder. Think of this. You are being built. If you do not understand that, you’ll spend your whole life looking for perfectionism. You never find it. You’ll end up on your own. And that is not the will of God for you. So grasp the doctrine of the local church. It needs multiple images to take this in. It’s the body to which Christ works. He’s the head. He’s the building. It is always a work in process. Third, the church is a home in preparation. The church is a home in preparation. Notice verse 22. You, too, are being built together. Okay, now what’s all this for? To become a dwelling place in which God lives by his spirit. Now, this is beautiful. It is telling us that the Lord Jesus Christ will not be the builder forever. One day the building will be complete. And when it is, Christ will make it his home. In other words, Christ will be at home with his people when all his work in and among his people is complete. You are being built together to be a dwelling place in which God lives by his spirit. Wonderful. Because you know that the whole Bible story has this great theme of God looking for a home on earth. Mount Sinai, God says to Moses, you make the tabernacle. Now that’ll be a meeting place. I’ll come down there and meet with my people. Then the Lord said something better. He said in Deuteronomy in chapter 12, when you get into the land of Canaan, there will be a place that the Lord God will choose and he will put his name there for his dwelling. You get into the promised land, he says, and there will be a place where I’ll put my name and it will be a place where I will come and I will live. A dwelling place. So the meeting place of the tabernacle is now going to be upgraded to a dwelling place in a location that God himself will decide. Well later, of course, David discerned that that location was the city of Jerusalem. And that is why Solomon built the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. And when that marvelous temple was built, do you remember what happened? The glory of the Lord came down in the cloud. And all the people could see the visible evidence of the presence of Almighty God in this place, the dwelling place of God. Here’s a place on earth where God actually is. He is present everywhere, we know that, but in a way that is hidden. Here is a place in which his presence is made known and it is made manifest, glorious. A dwelling place of God on earth. Then you follow the story of the temple. Amazing story. God’s people sinned against him in various ways. By the time of King Manasseh, the worship of God in the temple had been replaced with astrology. You can read about that in 2 Kings chapter 21. Astrological signs engraved on the walls of the temple of the holy God of Israel. And so you know what happens. The glory of the Lord departs. That’s in the prophecy of Ezekiel. The temple eventually is overrun. God’s people are moved out of the land altogether. They become exiles for 70 years. They’re out there. Then God brings them back in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and they rebuild the temple. But they haven’t got the resources to build a great temple like Solomon’s. So it’s just a little temple. And a fascinating reference, the younger folks are all cheering about this marvelous temple going up. The older folks who could remember the one that was there before were weeping. Is this all we can do now? And when they dedicated it, no cloud of glory came and filled that temple. They had the word of the prophets and they were looking for what God would do to create a dwelling place. So the prophets at the end of the Old Testament like Malachi are speaking like this. They’re saying they’re looking for the day when God will suddenly come to his temple. And then one day he did. Remember how Jesus walks into the temple and you remember what he found? How the leadership of the temple had lost their vision of ministry to the nations. No longer a house of prayer. And Jesus drives out the traders and then later he says, I tell you on this temple not one stone will be left on top of another. And in the year AD 70 in come the Romans, destroy the temple. What Jesus says comes true. And it’s never been rebuilt. So where’s the meeting place with God? Well Jesus said something else. Do you remember? He said, destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days. He wasn’t referring to the building. He was referring to himself, to his own flesh. You see the huge significance of that? The Lord Jesus Christ is saying, you’ve thought that there was just one location in the earth in which you could have a true meeting with God. I’m telling you, I am the place where you meet with God. No one comes to the Father except by me. You meet with the Father through me because in Jesus all the fullness of God dwells bodily. That’s Colossians in chapter 2 and verse 9. And then Jesus went on to say something extraordinary. John 14 he says this, if anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. And my Father and I will come to him and make our home with him. Did you hear that? Make our home with him. If you come to love and trust the Lord Jesus Christ, here’s the New Testament promise. That the Father and the Son through the agency of the Spirit will truly come to make home in you. Which is why later in the New Testament you find the Apostle Paul saying, do you not realize that your own body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? That’s what you are. If you’re in Christ, this really is true of you. That’s why Paul says, I’ve been crucified with Christ and I no longer live. But here’s the amazing thing, Christ lives in me. What was true of the Old Testament temple has become a living reality in me. Staggering. So now the church is a gathering of believers called out by God for worship and sent out by God to serve. When believers gather, Christ is present. Why? Because you, if you’re in Christ, bring the presence of Christ with you and you take the presence of Christ with you. Of course, when two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus, there he is in the midst. He has to be because if they are in Christ, each of the two or three bring the presence of Christ when they gather together. So what we’re learning here is that Christ makes his home on earth with his people. That everything that was pointed to with regards to the temple is actually fulfilled in believers who are being built together into a holy temple, we’re told here, a dwelling place in which God lives by his Holy Spirit. Here’s the amazing truth. Christ makes his home with us on earth until he brings us to make our home with him in heaven. Amazing truth of the building. Church is a building of people to work in progress, and it is a home in preparation. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and the message The Building, which is part of our larger series. What is the church and why does it matter? And don’t forget, if you missed the earlier part of the message or if you want to go back and listen again, you can always do that by going online. Come to our website, openthebible.org.uk, and you can stream any of our previously broadcast messages. Back to the message now, we’re in Ephesians chapter two. Here’s Colin. Here’s the amazing truth. Christ makes his home with us on earth until he brings us to make our home with him in heaven. Amazing truth of the building. Now, here’s the last thing here by way of application. How are we to use this truth? What use is all this? What difference will it make to you this week? Let me suggest a couple of things. Use this truth to help you grow in patience. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but God uses two imperfect environments to shape in believers the likeness of Jesus Christ. Two environments. They’re both very imperfect. The two places that Christ will work most obviously to shape you in his likeness as a believer are number one, the family, and number two, the church. They’re both very imperfect environments. The family and the church. Why? Because these are the places where, as a believer, you rub up against others. And he will use the experience of that to rub the rough edges that are around you as a living stone off so that you, in his mercy, may take your full place in this glorious and holy and wonderful building that is the home of almighty God forever. Think about yourself as a living stone. You’re hacked out of the quarry. And what does the builder do next? He throws you in a barrel along with some other stones. You immediately feel, hey, this is rough. There are edges all around me. Then what does he do? He takes a chisel and he takes a hammer and he starts chipping away around the edges. And he’s shaping you. And none of that is comfortable. God does that in his church. Here’s what happens. You ask to grow in patience. And what does God do? He brings someone utterly exasperating into your life. That ever happen to you? You need to grow in courage. You say, Lord, I need to grow in courage. And God brings someone who’s quite intimidating to you into your life. One writer says that Christians need the church for its problems as well as its blessings. That’s true. Because part of what God is doing in the imperfection of his church is the rubbing of our rough edges. One writer describes other believers as God’s abrasives. I like that. That’s helpful. That helps me. How in the world are the rough edges ever going to come off you if you never come up against God’s abrasives? That’s why loner Christians end up with all the rough edges still on. They never get close enough to the means that God would use to really shape them to be all that they can be in Christ’s glorious building. The church is the crucible in which we learn patience and endurance and forgiveness. And we need the church with its problems as well as its blessings. You need the church with its problems as well as its blessings. You never grow otherwise. This is the place where it happens, the family and the church. You’ve all heard this line, you know, if you find a perfect church, don’t go there because you can finish it, you’ll spoil it, right? Well, I’ve got a new version of that. If you ever find a perfect church, don’t go there because it won’t do you any good. There’s no abrasives. It’s a perfect church. There will be none in heaven. But we need them here on earth. It is through the trials in our lives that Christ sanctifies us. And he does that primarily in the family and in the church. I told you before the lovely story that Joseph Ton, the Romanian Christian pastor, told to Karin and I in our home. This man was imprisoned for his faith. And one evening, he was with us for some time, I got to ask him the question I wanted to ask. Joseph, tell me about being a pastor in prison. This dear and godly man told us all kinds of stories that night, and one of the stories that he told us was about one of the guards. Joseph had made it his practice to ask the guards about their children so that he could pray for them as well as for the guards, which of course was mind-blowing to these guys who were very harsh men. And one day, one of the guards said to Joseph, why is it that you are different from these other prisoners? These guys all hate us, and you are praying for me and for my children. And Joseph said this one line to him, he said, well, to me, you are God’s stone cutter. To me, you are God’s stone cutter. Now friend, who are the stone cutters in your life? Who is God using in this painful process of chipping off those rough edges so that you become all that you can be in the everlasting purpose of God? He does that painful work in the family, and he does that work in the church, and it’s for his everlasting glory. So use this to learn patience, and not to become someone who’s too easily discouraged whenever there’s a difficulty. You’ll never endure in ministry unless you get this clear and grasp it. Try to grasp it today. Use this secondly to defend against sin. The whole building rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. The whole point of a building, of course, is that it is visible. And the church is the visible home of the invisible God. We bear his name. We have his presence. And you’re going to go out into the world. We gather for worship. We’re sent out to serve. You’re going to go out into the world this week, and you bear the name of Christ. You’re a member of the body of Christ. You’re part of the building of Christ. And you are going to be tempted. You’re going to be tempted to do something you know you shouldn’t do. You’re going to be tempted to say something you know you shouldn’t say. You’re going to find that there’s an impulse that comes to you to cultivate a sour spirit and all the rest of it. And to defend against that, I want to encourage you to say to yourself this. How can I do this? How can I say this when I am a living stone in the holy temple of almighty God? Will help you to defend against sin. And here’s the very last thing. Use this to increase your joy. Use it to increase your joy. You say, well, building site. Sure, I’m in love with a building site. Well, this place was a building site. It’s pretty good now, isn’t it? What a joy when the building is complete. And to use that analogy, you see, there is coming a day when all of the work of Jesus Christ will be complete. And for you to be part of what Christ brings together for the everlasting glory of God will be an inexpressibly glorious joy. An inexpressibly glorious joy. It will be wonderful. And that day is coming, a temple in which God dwells by his holy spirit. That’s why right at the end of the Bible, you find the Apostle John seeing all of the redeemed company of God’s people, the whole church brought together in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he hears a voice from the throne that says, now the dwelling of God is with men. Now we’re in the presence of God with great joy forevermore. And I promise you this, that you will be more at home in the presence of Christ as a believer fully redeemed in heaven. You’ll be more at home there than at any time and any place you have ever been in your entire life in this world. You will be more at home with Christ and he will be at home with you. Nothing about us will grieve him on that day. Because his work will be complete. See why I say I want to encourage you to see that to be part of this that Christ is doing, that the church is the greatest privilege of our lives, the sight of heaven. You’ve been listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and the message, The Building, part of our larger series, What is the Church and Why Does It Matter? And we’ve been looking today at what we can learn from the analogy of the church as a building, how we can use that to defend against sin and use it to increase our joy. And if you missed part of the message or any of our earlier messages in this series and you or you might want to go back and listen again, you can do that by going online. Come to our website, openthebible.org.uk, there you can listen to any of our previously broadcast messages. Open the Bible is supported by our listeners. And this month, if you’re able to begin supporting Open the Bible with a new donation in the amount of five pounds per month or more, we’d love to thank you by sending you a book of prayers called Valley of Vision. Colin, who would you say this book is for? Oh, for every Christian who wants to pray. And it’s beautifully laid out to help us in different areas of prayer. So there are prayers here that will help you in expressing worship to God. There are prayers here that will help you in confessing sin to God. Prayers here that will help you in bringing your own needs to God. And they’re beautifully crafted. These are prayers that have come down to us over centuries from Christian believers who have crafted words that really help us speak from the heart to God. I just love this. I mean, for example, here’s one of the prayers speaking about how the broken heart is the healed heart. The contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit. The repenting soul is the victorious soul. To have nothing is to possess all, and to bear the cross is to wear the crown. Well, you know, you read things like that. They’re not only prayers that you can offer to God, but they stimulate and they enrich the mind and the heart. This is a marvellous resource for a Christian to have. I would love that there was a copy in every Christian home because it’s really going to help stimulate prayer to God. Well, we’d love to send you a copy of this book if you’re able to set up a new donation to the work of Open the Bible in the amount of £5 per month or more. Full details of this offer and lots of other information and resources on our website openthebible.org.uk. You’ve been listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pick, and I very much hope you’ll join us again soon. If you didn’t have a great relationship with your dad, how can you have a good relationship with God’s father? Find out next time on Open the Bible.