If you will, take your Bibles
and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2. I'm going to be using verses
11 through 19 as my text, but I want to concentrate most of
what I have to say from verse 19. And my subject is as we sang
our first hymn, The Household of God. God has a house. He has a house. He has a family. He has a people. He has his elect. And this is a truth that religion
denies altogether. But he has them. He has them
out of every... He opened the windows of heaven
and let John look by the Spirit of God into those things that
were yet to come. And he said he looked and beheld,
and here was the twelve tribes of Israel, and so much from each
tribe, 144,000, he saw all of them redeemed, all of them saved. But he said as he looked, he
saw a number that no man could number out of every kindred,
the nation, tribe, and tongue under heaven. That's his church. It's both Jew and Gentile. And
this is what Ephesians chapter two is all about. He's talking
about his church, his church, not the Jewish church, not the
Gentile church, but his church taken from Jews and Gentiles. the household of God, and unlike
the baseless claims of deceived men who talk about a universal
church, that all men and women are children of God. I've heard
them pray in their Arminian prayers, Father God, and that God loves
all men the same and treats all men the same. That's just not
so. Just not so. Jacob have I loved,
and Esau have I hated. Does that sound like God treats
all men the same? The Bible declares something
vastly different from that. The Scriptures declare that God
has chosen a people, made provision for that people by His Son, and
has a love for them that will never diminish. It will never
fail. He loves them. Who does He love? His elect.
His elect. Jacob, all of the sons of Jacob,
that made up Israel. So when he talks about Jacob,
he's talking about his people. Jacob have I loved. The Lord our God will never kill
or destroy or allow another to destroy those he truly loves. The Armenians say that because
of man's will and bad decisions, he'll cause God to bring an eternal
judgment upon those he loves. That's just not so. That's just
not so. They say a man can lose his soul. That man who's saved, that man
who's come to Christ, that man who trusted Christ, repented
of his sins and coming to Christ, but down the road, he messes
up. He does a little something wrong,
just like Peter did, had to be withstood to the faith. Well,
he's in danger of losing his soul. It's not what the scripture
says. Scripture says, talking about
his people now, he's not talking about all people, he's talking
about his people, his elect, those he loves. Though they believe
not, yet he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself. And for him to lose one of his
elect would be for him to deny himself. Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Tribulation? That's trouble,
that's what we're going through right now with this virus, trouble. Trouble gonna separate you from
the love of Christ? What about distress? There's
plenty of that going on. That going to separate you from
Christ? What about persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or
sword? As it's written, for thy sake
are we killed all the day long. We're counted as sheep for the
slaughter. They and all these things were more than conquerors
through him that loved us. Now watch this. For I am persuaded
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." That's
his elect. That's his house. He loves them. He loved them from the beginning
and he'll love them to the end. For God our Savior to lose one
soul for whom he died, God would have to cease to be God. and
for God our Father to lose one soul for whom he made eternal
provision would it be to make the inspired writings of this
book null and void. For God the Holy Ghost to fail
in his inward work and gifts he bestows upon God's elect would
be a declaration that there's something better, wiser, bigger,
more powerful than God and so he could never wear the name
God again. That's what it means. His house. His house. He prejudiced toward
his house. God has a people, and to offend
one of those people, he said, well, it'd be better for you
to tie a millstone about your neck and throw it in the deepest
part of the sea. A people He blessed in Christ
with all spiritual blessings according as He had chosen us
in Him before the foundation of the world. There were no provisions put
in place for the world. Our Lord came to the Father in
His high priestly prayer in John 17 and He said, I pray not for
the world. That's pretty clear in it. I'm
not making intercession for the world, but for those which thou
hast given me. His elect, Ephesians 1, 5, were
and are predestinated under the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. And everything God predestinates,
he works according to his purpose and after the counsel of his
own will. Paul said he looked at those
Thessalonians and wrote to them under the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost and said, I'm bound to give thanks to God for thee
always, for you Thessalonians, because God has from the beginning
chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit
and belief of the truth, whereunto he called you by our gospel.
You thought it just happened. No. No, it didn't just happen. brought it to pass. He brought
it to pass. Salvation is of the Lord. That's
what the scripture says. It's of Him in its eternal design. It's of Him in His objects. It's of Him in the means. It's
of Him as to the way. It's of Him as to the qualifications
and even the confrontations. and the confirmations, all of
God. He said, I give my sheep eternal
life, and no man shall pluck them out of my hand, nor out
of the hand of my Father, who is greater than all. And I and
my Father are one. We're one. The household of God
is the house of His choosing, the house of His redeeming, the
house of His construction, and the house based on his foundation,
his means, and his time. The scripture said, of God are
you in Christ Jesus. It's not of your will. It's not
of your decisions. It's not of you. It's of God
that we're in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. So let's look
at some things here in our text, and I'll do my best to teach
you from these things. First of all, I want you to consider
your origin. We need to keep that in mind
all the time. Paul said, remember. Remember
where God found you. I don't know if you've ever even
thought about it, but we're Gentiles. Everybody in this church this
morning, as far as I know, is a Gentile. We're Gentiles. He begins in verse 19 with these
words. Now therefore, you're no more
strangers. Look back at verse 11 of Ephesians
2. You remember that you being in
time past Gentiles in the flesh, you're called uncircumcision
by that which is called the circumcision in the flesh made with hand,
that is the Jews. They assumed because they were
fleshly sons of Abraham that they were God's elect and heirs
of God, God's chosen people. And that's what they told people.
And that's why we're circumcised. And the only way that you can
even be a proselyte is to be circumcised. For thousands of
years they were considered, and probably so even today, to be
all these Gentiles, to be heathens, ungodly, idol worshippers, ignorant,
uncircumcised dogs. That's how the Jews looked on
Gentiles. Enemies of God. Strangers from
the covenants of promise. Aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel. They had no legitimate hope.
They could not go into the word of God and find hope for themselves. When Paul that day turned from
the Jews to the Gentiles and quoted those Old Testament texts
It says, when they heard these words, they were glad. They were
glad. My soul. They had a hope, but it was a
hope with no foundation, one with no confirmation from God
and without God in the world. That's where God found me. He
found me an idol worshiper in Armenian religion. That's where
he found me. I was no different. I might as
well have been bowing down to Baal as bowing down to those
things that I conjured up in my mind about God. We're without God in this world
when He found us. No knowledge of Him. We had nothing
in our past. No prophets from Him. No ambassadors
from Him. power and i'll see it in his
presence left alone in a following world that's where god and it's
painful left her say it was in a curse
of work you know the old prophet i think i'm an army and love
to take that picture you this day and you'll serve they never
read the first part he's talking about If Baal be God, serve him. If
this other God be God, then serve him. Choose you this day whom
you'll serve. If you're out here in the Christian
world, it don't matter if you're a Nazarene or a Baptist, a Catholic
or a Buddhist. It doesn't make any difference.
You're an idol-worshipping Gentile dog. That's where God finds us. But we don't want to apply that
today. See, we just want to apply that to them people who built
statues and bowed down before the statues. Well, that word
image, It came from the word imagination. And that's what
we conjure up in our minds. We conjure up images of God. And we worship those images.
We're idolaters. That's where God found us. Left
alone in a fallen world. Left ourselves in a cursed world. Cast out like that baby that
Ezekiel talked about in Ezekiel 16. Uncared for. Unwanted. It was born and they took it
by the feet and just threw it out in the sand. After birth,
still on. Its navel hadn't been cut. It
hadn't been washed or swaddled at all. Just layin' there and
it's... Throwed it out there, unwanted.
Unwanted. This is the origin of every believer. And this is where God finds his
elect. shut up to their own wicked hearts
and minds, and shut up to deceive men and women all around them,
shut up to a cursed world with no light, and no answers, and
no truth, and no knowledge of God. But then Christ came and
preached peace to us that were afar off. He preached to us,
and He told us the truth. And He preached to them that
were nigh, for through Him we both have access by one Spirit
unto the Father. The Jew doesn't come different
than we do. If he's a believer, he comes the same way we do. Oh, I pray that God the Holy
Spirit will take his word this morning and open our eyes to
see where we are, and to see how things are, and to see where
God found us. Remember, that's what Paul's
telling them to remember. Remember. What's that got to
do with? Oh, it has everything to do with
it when you go to talk to somebody else about the Lord. We won't
be looking down our nose. I thank God I'm not like him.
No, you're worse. We might see the utter impossibility
of anyone to save themselves. And oh, how we'll cry for mercy
and beg for grace when God presses his truth upon our hearts and
shows us where we're at. Remember your origin. You were
Gentile idolaters. And then secondly, I want you
to consider God's reconciliation. He tells us in our text, we're
no more strangers. We're not foreigners anymore. You stop and consider that. Something
is taking place of which fallen men are ignorant of, totally
ignorant of. Scott preached a message on this,
on the reconciliation of God, and he said, stack your shotguns
in the corner. The war is over. The war is over. Jesus Christ has abolished in
his flesh the enmity even the law commandments contained in
ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man, so make
in peace. No peace with God until the law
is honored, until justice is satisfied, until the law is fulfilled. Our Lord said, till heaven and
earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall no wise pass from the law.
It has to be fulfilled. Every ordinance must be kept
to perfection. Every ordinance fulfilled in
its object and every transgression of it satisfied to the full satisfaction
of God. He's our Sabbath. Christ is our
Savior. There's no rest outside of Christ.
There's no honoring God outside of Christ. How you gonna honor
God outside of Christ? Read Isaiah chapter one. Read
what he says in there. You waving your hands in the
air and swaying with the music and singing songs. He said, who
required this of you? You'll just go on rebelling more
and more. You'll just keep on warring against
me on and on. You're covered from the top of
your head to the bottom of your feet with wounds and bruises
and putrefying sores. Now he said, you come let us
reason together. Though your sins be like scarlet,
I'll make them white as snow. White as snow. We're reconciled. These things,
we don't have a Sabbath. We rest in Christ. He's our Sabbath. He's our Sabbath. There remaineth
therefore rest to the children of God. And that rest is Christ. All these ordinances, all these
ordinances, all those Old Testament ordinances, every one of them
was fulfilled in Christ. Every one of them. Our reconciliation, Ephesians
2.16, is that Christ has reconciled both Jew and Gentile in one body
by the cross. That's how we're reconciled.
Having slain the enmity thereby. By our eternal and holy representative,
the law has been honored. It's been exalted. Justice has
been satisfied and all of God's elect have been reconciled to
God. Listen to these words. All things are of God, who hath
reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us
the ministry of reconciliation, to wit that God was in Christ,
reconciling the world, another name for the Gentiles, unto himself,
not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed
unto us the word of reconciliation. What are we gonna tell folks?
I'm gonna tell folks that there's a holy representative, his name
is Jesus Christ. And he came into this world,
one with his elect, under that law and satisfied that law, lived
under that law, exalted that law, honored that law, and he
was raised from the dead and justified all his people and
he's now seated at the right hand of God. They're guarantor,
guaranteeing their salvation. Oh, what peace and hope and comfort
floods our souls even to imagine that we're fellow citizens with
the Saints. I don't know that I can look
in the mirror and even say that, but what a joyful thought. What
a joyful thought. We're not strangers anymore. but we're fellow citizens with
the saints, heirs of God, children of God, beloved of God, blessed
of God, the elect of God. I tell you, when I'm watching
television, I'm seeing how many thousands with this virus and
how many thousands are dying from it, and then I think to
myself, you're a child of God. You're a child of God. The only
reason you're alive right now is because God's keeping you
alive. And when you've served your purpose in Him, He'll take
you home to be with Him. In the meantime, you don't need
to fear anything. What are you going to fear? Now
if all these things are just floating around out here, all
these things are just accidents, all these things are just, you
got no control, nobody's controlling them, they're just going here
and there, then I'd be afraid, I'd go hide in a hole. But if
he's on the throne, and I'm in him, secure in him, and he loves
me, and nothing's gonna separate me from that love, then I ought
to be able to rest, shouldn't I? I ought to be able to rejoice
in that. Oh my soul, God spared nothing
for the salvation of our souls. And since he spared not his own
beloved son, he'll spare nothing that's for our good in his glory.
He won't hold anything back. And I don't know of a more ungodly
thought than to think God would not spare his son, but might
withhold some vital things from me down the road. What an ungodly
thought. Yet preachers talk about these
things all the time. Now God will chasten his child,
but he won't forsake him. And if I'm the object of his
grace, he'll never leave me nor forsake me. That's what he said.
If I'm one for whom Christ died, I am of the household of God,
called with an effectual calling, called to him. What is an effectual
calling? What's he talking about when
he effectually calls? We're unto he called you by our
gospel, Paul said, to the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus
Christ. That means you can't just sit
there anymore. That's what that means. You won't
just sit there. You won't just hear some words
and say, well, I'll think about that. No, sir. When he calls,
you'll come. I tell this story all the time.
You couldn't tell anything about my mother. We lived in an old
two-story log home, and heated with coal and wood up in northern
Ohio. And it was so cold up there in
the wintertime, it was unbelievable. And daddy would shut the door,
and so the heat would just kind of sift through the floor and
keep it warm enough up there. But it was cold. And we had big
old comforters, and we'd get down in them beds and snuggle
up under them things the next morning. But boy, I sure didn't
want to get out of bed. And she'd come to the door and
tell us to get up. And we just sat up there, you
know. And she'd come, come on, it's time to get up. Honey, you
need to get up. It's going to be school time.
You need to come down and get your breakfast. She might say
that three or four times. But my dad come to the door and
said, get up. Buddy, your feet hit the floor.
And if they didn't, the next act was a hand on your feet,
dragging your butt down the steps. Affects your cause. There's a
general call that goes out in the gospel to all men. But there's
an effectual call, and it's irresistible. Irresistible. Called with an effectual calling,
made wise unto salvation. And here on this earth received
a favorable providence. Oh, my soul. What a favorable
providence the day he preached the gospel to me. Oh, I treasure
it. I treasure it. Born again by
the incorruptible word of God preached to me in the power of
God's Holy Spirit. Christ is the son Paul writes
in Hebrews, the son over his own house, whose house are we
if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm
unto the end. Hebrews 10, 38 says, now the
just shall live by faith, but if any man draw back, my soul
shall have no pleasure in him. But we're not of them that draw
back under perdition. but of them that believe to the
saving of the soul. And then lastly, what is it that
marks out his elect? Where is their confidence? What
is the basis of their hope? Ephesians 2.20, we're built upon
the foundation of the apostles and prophets. That is the word
of God, Old and New Testament. Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone. I looked up that, I've never
been satisfied with any definition I've ever heard about the cornerstone. And it's something in building
that we don't use anymore, but they used it in those old buildings.
And I looked it up and they had a picture of it, and just a little
short explanation of it, and finally it began to make a little
sense to me. You stand at the corner of a
building, this is the corner, And it's all stone. And there's
one big stone here, cornerstone, and it goes way up here, about
eight feet tall. And it covers both sides. And
from that corner, you can see all the way down this side, and
you can see all the way down this side. And that stone ties
them two together. What's he talking about in Ephesians
chapter two? He's talking about Jews and Gentiles. And here's the chief cornerstone.
And he's talking about the Old Testament prophets and the New
Testament apostles. Here's the chief cornerstone.
And you can look all the way down this side and see that truth.
And you can look all the way down and see that truth on this
side. And they're all connected by what? The chief cornerstone. He's the cornerstone. It is this stone which God said
through His prophets would be disannulled of men, but chosen
of God and precious. It is this stone that Peter said
the Jews said it not. They called it out. They refused
to incorporate it in their faith. And God made it the head of the
corner. It is this stone that Peter said was precious to the
believer, but a stumbling block to the unbeliever. He is the
foundation of God's house who ties the whole testament of God
together. On whom we're built, it says. And what yields our hope and
comfort? We're built on Him, as God has set Him forth. May God give us some understanding
of what I've said here today. would ask of you this morning
that you use this. We're meeting here by thy instruction. We're meeting. We're gathering
ourselves together. And to the best of our ability,
we're preaching the gospel. We're teaching the gospel of
Jesus Christ. And we have here a group, according
to the law, we're yet unable to meet. Come here and take away
these confusing things in our lives and let us focus on Christ
who is our hope. Let us see Him and find in Him
all that we need and all that we want. We ask it for Christ's
sake.