Church: Building Blocks

[00:00:03] [SPEAKER_00] Welcome to Gospel in Life. Behind every worldview is an attempt to answer life's biggest questions. Who are we? What gives our lives meaning? And is there hope for the future? Today, we continue Timothy Keller's extended series of teachings from the book of Ephesians as he takes a deeper look at how the Christian faith offers the only identity, purpose, and hope that can sustain us through every season of life.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_01] Something that we left off for just a while. And Ephesians is, the second chapter of Ephesians, the last part of the second chapter of Ephesians is all about the church. It's awfully relevant because sometimes when I see how fast our church here at Redeemer changes, I mean this new meeting space being a case in point.

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_01] When you move into a new meeting space, it's almost like you have to relearn everything little from the acoustics, who stands where, down to it creates a different feel. You have to say, how do we enhance our fellowship in this new incarnation? How do we enhance our relationships in this new incarnation? How do we make sure that we're still a ministry center in this new incarnation? And so on.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_01] And so it's a good idea for us to spend a couple weeks finishing up chapter 2, verses 19, 20, 21, and 22 are all about the church, what the church is. And you'll see as we go on why it's so important for us at Redeemer and us in New York City to continually get a grip on this.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_01] Ephesians 2, Ephesians 2, we said, the first part, verses 1 to 10, is really all about how God shows forth his power by bringing his life into a broken life and making it whole. So the focus is on the individual. But in verse 11 to 22, what we have there is a focus on the body of Christ, on the corporate.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_01] And in chapter 2, verse 11 to 22, we see that Paul's saying that another evidence of God's power is that he takes individuals who have come to know Christ and brings them together and puts them into the church. And the church is such a unique organization that Paul, we saw this some weeks ago now, he says, Paul says, in the church, Jew and Gentile.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_01] Now, he's only using Jew and Gentile as one example. But he says, in the church, God is able to bring people together who could never get along otherwise. And he turns them into, as he says up here, one new man. Verse 14, 15, it says, his purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_01] And the way the Greek really reads there is Paul is saying, the church is a new humanity. Before you're outside the church, you might be a this and a that and a this and a that. We differ according to race. We differ according to socioeconomics. We differ according to racial differences, ethnic differences, cultural differences, ideological differences. He says, when you get into the church, God makes available a power that turns us into a new humanity. And we looked at that.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_01] You see, and it is an astonishing claim. There's a sense in which here's here are Germans. Here are Africans. Here are Italians. Here are Japanese. Every one of them is a different kind of humanity. They all have a different culture. And of course, culture encompasses everything. They have a worldview that's different from one another. They've got values that differ from one another. Customs that differ.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_01] They have art that differs from one another. They have many, many things. They're all human beings. They're all human communities. But they all have, they're all different kinds of humanity. Each one of them is a different humanity. Paul has the audacity to say that belonging to a church is not like belonging to a club. It's not like joining Weight Watchers. It's not like coming to the Kiwanis Club. It's not like joining the Tennis and Racquet Club.

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_01] It's not simply that we have one common interest. I mean, see, that's what a club is. You've got a common interest. We don't have anything else in common. We all want to lose weight. We don't have anything else in common. We all want to play racquetball. We don't have anything else in common. We all want to sort of become socially, you know, socially upwardly mobile. That's why we join this club and this club and this club. It's not like being Japanese or German, see, or African, because when we talk about a culture,

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_01] we're talking about what makes an African different from a German is all sorts of things. Not just one thing in common, but worldview and outlook on things and the way the family is structured and ideology and politics and everything. Paul has the audacity to say the church is a new humanity, not a new club.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_01] When you become a Christian and Christians come on into the church, there are still differences. I mean, you're still a German Christian, an African Christian. You're still a male Christian or a female Christian. Those differences are not obliterated. And yet, what we have in common as Christians is now greater than what you have in common with the other members of your gender, of your race, of your socioeconomic class,

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_01] of your vocational grouping, the other members of those groups who do not share Christ with you. That's what he's saying. That's the radical nature of things. I doubt that many of us in this room have experienced that yet. Have you? Until you do, you're incomplete. Now, that's what Paul was saying in the first part of the chapter. And in the middle part, we looked at, in the last couple of weeks, the last several weeks,

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_01] we looked at the fact that Paul explains, in a sense, for a while he digresses and explains why Christians have this great unity. That's why he says, he made the two one, having brought us near through the blood of Christ. He came and preached peace to you, for through him we both have access to the Father by one spirit. And we've been looking for a few weeks at these common experiences that we have. Through the spirit, we have mystical union with God. We talked about that.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_01] Through the blood of Christ, some of us who are religious and some of us who are not very religious, some of us were very goody-two-shoes and some of us were just terribly licentious. And Paul says that the blood of Christ puts us all in the same spot, all in the same legal position. I won't digress and won't look at that at all. We've talked about that. Now, at the very end of the chapter, he gets back and just begins to heap up metaphors and images to just give us a sense of the glory of what the church is. He's already told us we're new humanity.

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_01] Shocking thing. He says, now in Christ, in a sense, there is no Jew or Gentile. That doesn't mean you lose your Gentileness, your Jewishness, your Germanicness, and so on. What it means is what you've got in common now transcends that. Then he goes and says why. Now he comes back at the end and we read these verses. And these verses we're going to look at for a few weeks only because Paul gives us such a rich pile of metaphors. He's almost stacking up images, image upon image upon image,

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_01] seeking to show you the richness of what the church is. The reason I want us to study these and think about these is we are, I think more and more people in and around our community of Redeemer is beginning to understand the richness of individual salvation, in Christ. That means you're beginning to realize that being a Christian is an adventure. Being a Christian is a deep and profound thing. It's not just being nice.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_01] And it's not even just having the catharsis of forgiveness when you first come to faith in Christ. But being a Christian means adoption. Being a Christian means a completely retooled psychology and self-image. Being a Christian entails a completely new outlook on the world. Being a Christian changes the way in which you relate to society. Being a Christian, we've talked a lot. And I think there's more and more people who are understanding the richness

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_01] and the multidimensionality of being a Christian individually. But you haven't even begun. We haven't even begun to get radical about the church. We haven't begun to see what the promises are. I mean, we haven't even begun to skim the surface of what the promises are. You know, little churches tend to be clubs. And big churches tend to be circuses. And almost none of them really are churches.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_01] Not if you see what the Bible says the church can be. I want us at least to get hungry for it. I want us to get, in a healthy way, desperate. To begin to realize the things that the Bible says can be happening in the church. Let me just read you these verses. And we're just simply going to look at one of the images here tonight. We're going to get started. Verse 19. Consequently, says Paul. Consequently.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_01] Therefore, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_01] And that's a perfect parallel to what Peter says in his epistle. Peter says this. Come to him, the living stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him. You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house. For in Scripture it says, See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_01] Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. See, Peter and Paul are saying the same thing. There's a lot of things, a lot of ways to understand the church. And every metaphor tells us something different. Because Jesus is a shepherd, we're sheep. We're the flock. That tells us something. We're not looking at that tonight. Because Jesus is king, we're told here, we're citizens. That tells us something. We don't look at that tonight, all right? Because God is our father, and Jesus is our brother, we're family, we're children.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_01] We're not looking at that tonight. There's all sorts of great images. Tonight we'll just look at this one. God is the master builder. Jesus is the chief cornerstone. We are all living stones. Because when we came to Jesus, that living stone, we became living stones. And we're being built up into a holy temple. A dwelling place for the spirit of God. So tonight, even though you are sheep, we're not going to talk about it. Even though you are children,

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_01] we're not going to talk about it. Even though you are citizens, we're not going to talk about it. Even though you are all these things, tonight, you're stones. Rocks. Okay? Some of you say, I'm in that mood anyway. Good. Fine. I feel like a stone. I feel like a rock. Let's look at this. This image tells us several things. First of all, you might say the most basic thing

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_01] is it tells you that you are a building block. You are not a freestanding temple. You're not a freestanding thing. You're a building block. I come from Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State. Haven't you ever seen that? They have little keystones on the license plates and all that. If you're not from Pennsylvania, you probably never even heard why. You know why it's called the Keystone State?

[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_01] I'm glad you asked me that. Because it was in the 13 original colonies. There were six to the north and six to the south. And therefore, they considered themselves the Keystone State. Why? Well, Keystone is when you have a bunch of, you know, stones, of course, that you're turning into an arch. And the stones are all, by and large, the stones are roughly the same kind of size and shape. And you pile them on each other. When you get to the top, you need an odd-shaped stone

[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_01] in order to keep the stability of the arch. And that stone, of course, has to be shaped like this. It has to be shaped higher at the top, lower at the bottom. So it's, you know, got big shoulders and a tiny little waist, in a sense. And then it fits in there beautifully. And it turns the whole arch, of course, into a real arch. It's what gives stability to everything else. It's in the middle. It's the capstone. It's the crown. It's the Keystone. Funny thing about the Keystone

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_01] is that it creates stability when it really has none of its own all by itself. Only when it's surrounded by the other blocks does it create stability. By sticking it right there, all the other blocks are held in place and you have stability. But if you, I mean, I've had one once. You can't, the Keystone itself can't even stand up. You know, all by itself, if you try to stand it up, it's very, very unstable. It really won't stand up because it's very wide at the top

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_01] and very, very narrow at the bottom. It really doesn't work. Building blocks are built, they're designed to be part of the greater whole all by themselves. They really have no sense to them. They have no meaning or purpose to them. And what this is telling us, it's a very profound, I think, spiritual as well as psychological insight. We're all meant to be part of a greater whole. Now, the Bible tells us that God created us

[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_01] to be in this very thing, a spiritual family. all by ourselves, we really cannot stand. Together, we create a stability. Now, you know, almost any other culture knows that. You didn't, most cultures are wise enough to realize that. Most cultures are not nearly as individualistic as Western American and European secular culture is now. What I'm about to tell you, if I was preaching in most parts of the world, and I wouldn't spend much time on this, I wouldn't talk about it

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_01] much at all. And the main reason for that is because most of you would be out there saying, well, of course, an individual needs to be part of the greater whole. An individual is not a freestanding, self-sufficient self. You've got to be part of a family. You've got to be part of a church. You've got to be part of the greater whole. All by yourself. You can't make your own decisions by yourself. You certainly can't live only for your own satisfaction, fulfillment. You must live for the fulfillment of the group. You must make your decisions as part of the group.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_01] Most places in the world understand that, not us. So I do need to spend a moment or two here. When the Bible says that you are stones, that you are building blocks meant to be part of a greater whole, it's saying something very profound. For example, on the one hand, it means that you need to be part of a bigger cause. You need to have a bigger cause than just to live for your own happiness. One of the ironies

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_01] of Western society is that we're really told that the bottom line of what you're living for is fulfillment, is to authenticate yourself. You've got to go out and decide what it is that really will fulfill you. You can't listen to what your family says. You can't sublimate yourself to the greater whole. You've got to find out what fulfills you and you've got to do it. Find out what you want to do and do it with all your might. That's the only way you'll find significance.

[00:16:28] [SPEAKER_01] Here's the illogic of it. If the greatest cause you have in life is to be happy and comfortable, you've got nothing to live for except yourself. That means you've got nothing to die for. You have nothing to sacrifice for. If that's true, there's nothing bigger than you, no cause bigger than you to sacrifice for. Let me ask you a question. Give me a list. How many things would you put on a list if I said, give me the things that you're willing to go to prison for?

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_01] Give me the things that you would never compromise on them. If somebody said, what do you believe? What do you stand for? You'd never compromise on them. You'd go to prison first. You'd lose all your belongings first. You'd be tortured first. You'd be killed first. How many things are on the list? You know, the pollsters know that a majority of Americans my age cannot identify any cause for which they would die.

[00:17:28] [SPEAKER_01] Now, here's the irony. You want to make, you want to be significant. You want to find your own fulfillment. So you say, I'm going to, only I can decide what is right for me. Which means you're living for nothing but your own feelings and your own cause and your own happiness and your own comfort. If you've got nothing to die for, heroism's impossible for you. Nobility's impossible for you. Here's the irony.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_01] In your quest to become more significant, you make no difference to anybody but yourself. Which means you make no difference at all. You lose your significance trying to find your significance if the greatest cause you've got is to be happy. And a lot of you have ditched so many covenants. Why? Because it's not making me happy. It's a good thing Jesus didn't do that to us. It's a good thing that when Jesus was on the cross,

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_01] arms splayed out in the ultimate posture of final vulnerability and people were laughing at him and joking and mocking him and spitting on him. It's a good thing he didn't look down like I think many of us would and say, this relationship isn't fulfilling me anymore. I'm out of here. Because you see,

[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_01] his greatness was seen in that he had a greater cause than his own happiness. Father, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but what? Thine be done. Gosh, even the son of God had a cause bigger than his own will. And if you don't, don't you see we're building blocks. We need to be part of a whole. We're not freestanding all by ourselves. We don't make sense. Not only that, let me go one step further.

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_01] We not only need a bigger cause than just to live for ourself, we need a bigger authority than just our own feelings. How do you decide what's right and wrong for you? In most cultures, in most places in the world, the way you decide what's right and wrong for you is you do it as a group. Your community, your clan, your family. You know, there's plenty of you whose parents came from another culture than American, right? Came from some other place that wasn't anywhere near as individualistic. So you know what I'm talking about. Most places,

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_01] people would never imagine that you simply make up your own mind and decide what's right just for you. Well, that is the logic of modern Western secular society. But friends, it doesn't work on a number of levels.

[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_00] Woven into our slogans, songs, and social media feeds are the stories that our culture tells us about life's biggest questions, like, what gives my life meaning? Can I have a happy and fulfilling life? And why is there so much suffering in the world? We don't really choose these stories, but our culture is telling them to us every day. So what are the stories our culture tells us about who we are? And do they actually deliver what they promise? Timothy Keller and his son, Michael Keller, explore this in a brand new book, The Stories We Live By.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_00] Tim began this book before his death, compiling hundreds of pages of notes and collaborating with Michael before giving it to him to complete. In it, they explore some of our culture's most prominent narratives about topics like identity, freedom, happiness, and progress, unmasking how these narratives shape our lives. They examine why these stories resonate with us so deeply, and yet how these narratives ultimately aren't able to help us through the hardships and sufferings of life. The Stories We Live By offers a challenge to skeptics

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_00] and to Christians alike to examine the underlying their lives. that drive our lives and an invitation to discover a story that's big enough to make sense of the beauty and the brokenness of the world. When you give to Gospel in Life during the month of September, we'll send you this new book, The Stories We Live By, as our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_00] slash give. Because the gospel truly changes everything.

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_01] Robert Bellow wrote a book, Habits of the Heart, in which he defined the radical individualism of Americans today. And in that book, there was an interesting finding. He asked people and found out that 81% of all Americans believe that you should arrive at your religious beliefs. Let me see if I get this right. 81% agree to this. A person should reach his or her own religious beliefs apart from any church, any synagogue,

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_01] or any religious institution. Okay? A person should reach his or her own religious beliefs apart from any church, synagogue, or religious institution. You should do it yourself. Does that make sense to you? Come on, admit it. It does. Admit it. You're not the 19% that said no. And yet, do you think they would agree to this statement? A person should reach his or her own

[00:22:47] [SPEAKER_01] medical treatment, just decide his or her own medical treatment without any references to doctors, hospitals, medicine, medical institutions at all. Would they agree to that? No, of course not. Why? Because it would be stupid to ignore medical institutions where the accumulated wisdom of ages and ages of medical research and medical practice, is, you see, in a medical institution all that wisdom is embodied and maintained. That's why you need a medical institution.

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_01] And yet, people have the audacity to say, when it comes to spiritual things and religious things, you should arrive at your own beliefs apart from the church, the synagogue, the religious institutions. Are you kidding? You're kidding, right? What makes you think that you can ignore the greater whole of what the church says the thousands of years of wisdom embodied in religious communities

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_01] any more than you can afford to ignore the medical wisdom embodied in medical institutions? It just doesn't work when you say, my own feelings, my own conscience should tell me what's right and wrong for me. Or, let's go one step further, another way to say it, some of you may have heard because in the morning service I put it this way, one of the problems with looking at your own feelings to decide

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_01] what your authority is, what is right and wrong for you, is that your feelings contradict. They contradict. Be honest. They contradict not only from day to day and year to year, sometimes they contradict on the spot. You know, I mean, I want to be loved, but I want to be completely independent. A lot of you have had a tremendous amount of trouble because both of those things are fundamental desires in the human heart now. I want love.

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_01] I want to be loved, but I want to be totally independent. I don't want, you know, don't fence me in. Which one of those desires are you going to follow? Because the fact is they're on a head-on collision. I want love, I want to be independent. Listen, follow my feelings, which one's right? And as I was saying this morning, I want to be thin and I want to eat ice cream. They're both real desires. And those two desires are down in my soul

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_01] with their arms, with their hands locked around each other's throats, each trying to strangle the other one. They hate each other, those two desires. Each one knows that this soul is not big enough for the both of us. And it isn't. But neither one can seem to kill the other one. I've been waiting. If one could kill the other one, everything would be fine, but they can't. Because they're both my desires, they're both my passions, you know?

[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_01] I want to be physically fit and I want to eat everything in sight. I want to be loved by everybody, but I want to be completely unaccountable. I want to be independent. I want to be able to call my own shots. You see, it's only by the accumulated wisdom of religious institutions here. I'm not, you know, I'm not even arguing for Christianity for the minute. I'm just talking about religion. It is absolutely ridiculous and silly to think that you are a freestanding building.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_01] You are not. You are nothing but a building block. You've got to be part of the whole. All by yourself, you don't work. You have to get your, you need an authority bigger than just your own individual feelings. You need a cause to live for bigger than just your own individual cause and your own happiness. One more thing. One more way in which I'm trying to show you that you're spiritually incomplete. That's what it means when it says we're part of, we're living stones in a temple. You're spiritually incomplete all by yourself.

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_01] I said you need a cause greater than yourself and you need a what? You need authority greater than yourself. You also need validation from outside yourself. Now, I'll be brief again on this because this actually would dovetail with the sermon from a couple weeks ago and another services on nakedness just for those of you who might have heard about it or heard it. I can never get my nine-year-old at night who always

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_01] kicks his covers off to put his covers on himself. He always comes and asks me to cover him. He said, Daddy, I want you to put my covers back on at 2 a.m. in the morning. All right. I go and I cover him and every night I say, can't you do it yourself? And he says, I love it so much when you do it. My 16-year-old says, you know, when I'm married, are you still going to be able to tuck me in? So why? He says, oh, it just feels so good to have somebody else come in and put me in the bed and cover me up and to keep me

[00:27:44] [SPEAKER_01] from being cold. I say, you can do it yourself. Now, I really think on a physical level that is actually a mirror of something we all know at a spiritual level. You cannot tell yourself that you're all right. Look at all the flaws. You know, you can't withdraw your life. What you have written in your life, you have written. There's no erasing it. It's out there. There's no way to get it back.

[00:28:14] [SPEAKER_01] You can't withdraw your life. It can't be done. And there's lots of things in your life that you regret. A lot of them. There's lots of things that you're even afraid to let people see because of how bad you feel about them. All right? How will you ever feel that you're okay? How will you ever feel that you're all right? The individualists of the Western culture say, only you can decide what your standards are. Only you can decide

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_01] whether you're all right or not. Only you can authenticate yourself. It doesn't work. You cannot look at that record and say, in spite of all these things that I've done, in spite of how I screwed him over there, in spite of the way in which I broke that promise, in spite of the fact that nobody knows how dishonest I was, in spite of all these things, I'm really okay. You will never believe it. Never. You've got to have somebody else cover you. You've got to have somebody else. Somebody's got to come and say, I see it.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_01] I see what you are. I see what you've done. I see your pluses and your minuses. I see all this stuff. And you know what? I love you. I love you. I love you. I admire you. You're all right. You're okay. And they patch on the back or they give you a hug depending on whether they're male or female. And then what? You feel what? You feel like somebody's tucking me in. Somebody's covering me. You know, the fact is that you cannot validate yourself. You can't do it. You've got to find

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_01] somebody else who you admire and who you respect. And they have to do it. And that, of course, remember I said, that's just at the human level. Ultimately, what the Bible says we've got to have is to have God know us and love us. You know, the great problem that all human beings have is that we believe that we can be known or we can be loved but we can't be both. We believe if somebody's going to love us, we've got to hide what we really are.

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_01] If somebody's going to know us, they're probably going to find out what's wrong with us and so they're just going to head in the other direction. So the best thing we can do is sort of cover up and put on a good front and let people see the best and hope that they like us. But what we want more than anything, what we want more than anything, more than anything, is to actually have somebody look at us all the way to the bottom and see all those things that we're ashamed of. All those things we're most afraid makes us fundamentally and completely and finally unlovable.

[00:30:42] [SPEAKER_01] We need to have somebody look at all those things and say, I love you anyway. We need that. The only person that can do it is God. It's really the person that you most want to look at you and know you and love you. He's the only one that can do it ultimately and finally. Don't you see? All by yourself. You're just a building block. You put yourself into this great temple, this great building, this great architectural wonder and you're a marvel

[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_01] but you just lay there on the grass and what are you? You're a lump of stone. You're shaped and of course you'll look beautiful when you're put in there alongside of the other stones that complement you. Then you're part of a glorious whole all by yourself. You probably can't even stand up. You are not meant to stand on your own. Now, the only other thing I want to point out and would you see that? Do you understand that?

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_01] Before I move on, where are you built in to other people? I mean built in. The bigger our church gets, the easier it's going to be to come and taste test. You see? It's going to be like in those malls where people come out and say, here, taste test this. It's very easy to come on in and I know many of you get a great deal of inspiration help from coming, singing,

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_01] listening to teaching and so forth. My question is, do you see yourself though as a stone that needs to be built in, needs to be cemented in, needs to be part of a whole? Many of you are acting as if you're individuals. The church is not a drop-in center. It's not a Weight Watchers Club. Like I said, it's a new humanity are you being, have you been glued into something like that? Now, having said all that, well, you know, here I am kind of

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_01] laying on you. I know how many of you have been burned. I mean, I sometimes think that people move to New York in order to stay freestanding stones because you've been bothered, you've been burned other places, you've been parts of families, maybe you've been parts of churches, you've been parts of clans that were oppressive. Of course there are oppressive ones. But the alternative, the life-giving, healing alternative is not to be all by yourself.

[00:33:10] [SPEAKER_01] We're so doggone lonely because we weren't built to be this way. Don't forget, when God originally, according to the Bible, when God originally invented human beings, he invented Adam. Now Adam had his perfect relationship with God. No sin in his life. Hmm? Wonderful prayer times, probably. In other words, when he asked, when he said, Lord, I need to speak to you, the Lord actually showed up, you know, visibly like that. I mean,

[00:33:40] [SPEAKER_01] there's service. He walked with God in the cool of the day. And yet, God looks at him and says, it is not good for what? You know, you know, all through the early verses of Genesis, everything that God makes, he says, it is good. That's the word benediction. Diction, of course, means word. Benediction means the good word. Everything he made, he made the stars and it was good. He made the sun and it was good. He made the sea and it was good.

[00:34:10] [SPEAKER_01] He made the animals and he made the grass and it was good. He made man and it was good. But then, suddenly, this is before the fall, before sin enters the world. Suddenly, there's not a benediction, there's a malediction, meaning the bad word. Suddenly, God looks at Adam and says, it is not good for man to be alone. Let me tell you something. If loneliness was a burden for a guy who had no sin,

[00:34:40] [SPEAKER_01] how much more of a burden is there going to be for us? Well, you say, you know, if there wasn't sin in the world, I wouldn't be as lonely. I don't trust people. That's the problem. I don't trust these sinners. Well, you know, you're a sinner too. Don't forget that. It's very, very, very frightening to open yourself up. But you're never ever going to actually get what you're built for and that is to be built into a bigger whole unless you're willing to make yourself vulnerable. It's the only way.

[00:35:10] [SPEAKER_01] Now, last thing. Having said that, you know, are you built into something? I know that it's one of those things like, look, vulnerability is hard but invulnerability is harder. Hmm? Opening yourself to other people. Letting them see who you are. Going to other, if you're a Christian, going to other Christians and saying, I really need someone to be accountable to me and me to them. I need to get closer to people. I mean, opening yourself,

[00:35:39] [SPEAKER_01] making yourself vulnerable is very hard but not making yourself vulnerable is harder. Remember that C.S. Lewis quote? He says, if you don't want your heart to be broken, don't give it to anybody and then it'll become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

[00:35:52] See?

[00:35:53] [SPEAKER_01] You don't want your heart to be broken? Then it'll become unbreakable and hard. The only two alternatives. You are not built to stand on your own. You're built for friendship. You're built for fellowship. You're built for being in a church. You're built for, to have people know who you are, to look at you all the way to the bottom, other Christians and you to look at them. You're built for all this. Okay, now, all I can do to close here is to not try to show you the rest

[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_01] of this particular metaphor but just show you the dimensions. What's beautiful about the whole picture is it says, you are no longer foreigners, you are members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises. Let me just show you what all this means. If the church is a temple and you

[00:36:51] [SPEAKER_01] are stones, living stones, first of all, living stones have to be hewn out of the quarry. How do you become a building block? Somebody's got to cut you out and that's conversion. That's conversion. What makes you buildable, what makes you buildable into the, somebody has to cut you out and conversion makes you distinct so that when Christians get together, they've been hewn at the quarry through the experience of conversion. We'll talk about that next week.

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_01] And so when you get together, you fit. You know, at the quarry, they build, they bring the stones out. The temple in the Old Testament, all the stones were shaped at the quarry. When they brought the stones out, they made them into perfect squares so that when they got to the temple site, the temple was built up in silence. There was no sound of a hammer, there was no sounds of drills or anything like that because when the stones got there, they fit. Conversion,

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_01] the experience of the new birth, makes you into a stone that fits in with other living stones. Secondly, the stones have got to be laid on a foundation and the foundation is the apostles and prophets which we're going to look at later and that means the truth. The word of God, the Bible, the words of the apostles and prophets, if you do not have that in common, you can't have this incredible unity. One of the reasons why Christians can get together and have a tremendous

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_01] unity that we can get along, we can open ourselves to each other and when we have a fight we can reconcile with each other it's because we're under the authority of the word or we should say to use the metaphor, we're built on the authority of the word of God. If a group of people does not have a consensus that the word of God, the Bible, is the supreme authority for them individually, they can't have this incredible community and incredible unity. You know that. If you can't agree on what the Bible says, you're never going

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_01] to be able to agree on how to use your sexuality. If you're not underneath the Bible, there are going to be times in which you need to reconcile and forgive each other and unless you both acknowledge the authority of the word of God, you'll never do such a hard thing. Therefore, these stones, not only do they have to be hewn out of the quarry but then they have to be built on the foundation and then it says they have to be joined together. And so you have conversion, you've got the foundation of the word of God and then you've got

[00:39:19] [SPEAKER_01] the one anothering and the gifts of the spirit which bind us together and we're going to look at all that. But what's lovely and beautiful about this is the Bible shows us that the church is like a building. You are living stones. If you come to Jesus, you become a living stone which means you'll find other people that you can fit with because of your common experience in Christ. There'll be people that you'll get along with you never thought you'd get along with before. People who can, you can be vulnerable to,

[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_01] who can look at you and who can love you and can mediate some of that redeeming love and grace of Jesus Christ. That's all in the text and we'll spend the next couple of weeks looking that over. Let me just ask you this here. Two things. Number one, think about our church. Think about Redeemer. Many of you are part of it. Many of you are guests or visitors. Many of you just, you know, show up and you're part of other churches and that's all fine

[00:40:16] [SPEAKER_01] but think about the church that you're part of if you're a Christian. What is the energy directing it? Is it really just the fact that it's great to have a whole lot of other people who are about my age and that's why I go? Is the energy that's directing it the fact that there's better public communication and better music than other churches? Is that the energy directing it? Or is it that we're living stones and in the midst of us is the Spirit of God Himself, the presence of God Himself

[00:40:45] [SPEAKER_01] and that's the thing that's building the temple up? And one other last question. Look at yourself. It's not good for man or woman to be alone. Have you become ready to commit yourself and give up the independence of course to get the love? You can't have love and have utter independence. In so many of your cases dear friends your autonomy is destroying your freedom. Come to Him.

[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_01] The living stone chosen by God and precious to Him and you also like living stones are being built up into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood. For the Bible says I lay a stone in Zion a chosen and precious cornerstone and the one who trusts in Him don't be afraid will never be put to shame. Let's pray. Our Father we pray that tonight and the next couple weeks we'll think more about what you want the church to be. Not just our church but the church.

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_01] I pray that you would help us to see that on the basis of the gospel and on the basis of what the Bible says we are in Christ we've got an ability for a unity and an ability for solidarity that is really available nowhere else. Would you help us to see what these great promises are? Would you help us to have the wisdom to appropriate them? Would you give us the humility to repent where we are really avoiding the commitments and the covenants that are necessary to partake in all this?

[00:42:16] [SPEAKER_01] We pray the Lord that you would make us your church which really is only to pray oh make us as happy as you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because you know one another you love one another you submit to one another you serve one another make us like you make us one even as you are one it's in Jesus name we pray Amen.

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_00] Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you are encouraged by today's teaching you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it and to find more great gospel-centered content by Timothy Keller anytime visit gospelandlife.com Today's sermon was recorded in 1993 the sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church