Where I'm heading this week

Extreme Makeover: The House That God Built
Date preached: 23-Jul-06, Sebewaing (Foster’s Dedication)
RCL Proper 11 B
Text: Ephesians 2:11-22
Subject: How do we fit into God's plan to bring all things together?
Complement: We are being built, by God into His house!
Exegetical Idea: Jews and Greeks now shared the unity of a new creation.
Homiletic Idea: The church is more than a collecion of people, it is God's house and walls that once separated us from eachother are gone.
Purpose: Hearers will pledge their lives to brining one another closer to God in word, deed and relationship. (Especially Foster)
Type: Deductive, Expository

• The back story: Yesterday We Were Outsiders (11-13)


• What we were


• Mired (1-6)


• Wanderers with out a home (19)


• Didn’t know what God was doing


• People of the Book?


• God is revealing his plan of reconciliation! Are you listening?


• Only Yesterday


• New Christians: Do you remember what the transformation did in you?


• Old Christians: Do you take for granted what God did in you?


• Life is like a vapor


• Eternity awaits. You’ve only spent a day, how will you live tomorrow?


• Demolition day: God Tore Down The Wall (14-18)


• Create for himself one new humanity in place of two


• The insiders


• The outsiders


• What separates us?


• Private lives


• Private hurts


• Private dreams


• What if we really knew each other?


• The reveal: God Built A New House For Himself (19-22)


• Fitted brick by brick


• Your place


• Supporting those around you


• Church is not peripheral (1:23)


• The temple of God: you!


• A temple where God is at home

The House that God Built

David wants to build God a house, a palace to place the ark. God turns the irony on David. "You think I need a house?! I am going to build you into a house," He says. David turns God's promise into a song, Psalm 89.

Once and for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David.
His line shall continue forever, and his throne endure before me like the sun.
It shall be established forever like the moon, an enduring witness in the skies." Selah

The promsie to David is fufilled in us! Jesus sits enthroned in us now and forever. Paul tells the Ephesians that God is still building his house.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

We are reconciled, joined together in unity, being built into the spritual house of God's promsied dwelling! Halleluja. Selah.