Note: the following is the manuscript for the message and will not match exactly the recorded message above.
Introduction
What is a church? Ask 10 people and you might get 10 different answers. Some might say a church is a building, or an organization, an event, a group of people, the body of Christ, a religious institution, a family, etc.
If you would have asked first century Roman citizens what is a church, or an ἐκκλησία in the Greek, they probably would have said something similar to a city counsel or legislative assembly.
The word ἐκκλησία is based on the word καλέω, which means to be summoned to called. So, an ἐκκλησία is a people called together for a purpose. Perhaps jury duty would be another comparison.
Over the last two thousand years, the meaning of church has shifted due to the global spread of Christianity. In the early days it was more of a movement within Judaism, than an organization or religion of its own.
For most people today, it would simply mean an organized group of Christians, a building, or an event.
A church is all of these things. Above them all, the church is a community created by God the Father, established by God the Son, and empowered by God the Holy Spirit.
As members of the church, we are representatives of God in three main ways. We are God’s temple, or dwelling place. We are Christ’s body, or his hands and feet. And, we are God’s priests, declaring the praises of God and bearing witness to his reconciling work through Christ.
In this way, the church is a Trinitarian community. The Trinity is made up of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three persons in one God, eternally relational.
The church is also communal and relational. God created the church to be God’s people and body and bride of Christ in communion with one another to reflect his relational nature.
Today’s message is focused on this communal and relational identity. We will see from 1 Corinthians 3 that the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit, from Ephesians 5 that the church is the body and bride of Jesus the Son, and in 1 Peter 2, we will see that the church is the people and priests of God.
Temple of the Holy Spirit
1 Corinthians 3:16–17 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.”
Let’s go back to the book of Exodus for a few minutes. In Exodus 24, after God has given instructions through Moses to Israel about how to live as his people, we read that the Israelites are committed to being in a relationship with God.
What follows is detailed instructions on how to build a dwelling place for God. The Israelites were living in tents, so God will also live in a tent, called a Tabernacle.
The Israelites followed all the instructions and completed the work of building a tent for God to live in among them. Then Exodus 40:34–38 says that God moved into the tent they constructed which was set up in the middle of their camp:
“Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels.”
For close to 500 years, this temporary and mobile structure was the only visible dwelling place of God on earth. Then Solomon had a temple built in Jerusalem, which was used for around 400 years, when it was destroyed by the Babylons. Then another was rebuilt and used for close to 600 years before being destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
When Jesus came, he came to establish a new dwelling place of God. John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
That word “dwelling” in this passage is the same word for tabernacle in Exodus. In other words, when Jesus came, the dwelling place of God entered humanity. Not a building or a physical location, but humanity itself.
This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:16 “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”
The Spirit indwells each person who welcomes him in. But not just individuals. It says the Spirit dwells, or tabernacles, in our midst.
The church, meaning the gathered people of God, is a sacred space where heaven and earth meet. We are the dwelling place of God.
So, when someone refers to a church building as the house of the Lord, they are right, but not because this building is God’s house. It is because it is where God’s true earthly dwelling place, his people, gather for worship. Wherever we meet, it is the house of the Lord.
We are a Spirit-filled people, called to reflect God’s holiness, unity, and presence. This was demonstrated in Acts 2 when the Spirit of God came in power on the Christians gathered in Jerusalem.
Acts 2:1–4 says, “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
For the Jewish people this experience would have brought to memory the Tabernacle at the foot of Mount Sinai when God showed up in fire and smoke. The presence of God was visible through the first disciples, the new dwelling place of God.
The question and challenge for us as a church in Hoadley is, how are we cultivating a community in which the Spirit is welcome and active? This is a question worth exploring, but let’s hold on to it while we look at the church as the Body and Bride of Christ.
Body and Bride of Christ
This section of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is mainly about right living as followers of Jesus. Just before this passage, in Verse 15 he says, “Be very careful how you live—not as unwise but as wise.”
The instruction that follows is in contrast to the normal way that people lived in the Roman culture, which was in many ways similar to our culture. The main difference is that ours is a post-Christian culture. Theirs was pre-Christian.
Paul then describes how husbands and wives should treat each other. This instruction about marriage helps us in understanding our relationship with Jesus as his bride.
These verses can very often be taken out of context and give permission for men to act improperly and women to feel oppressed. This is not what should come out of this passage. The most important verse in this passage is verse 21: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
There are no privileged people among us because we all belong to Christ. In the church, your gender, age, or social status does not matter. It doesn’t matter how much education or wealth you have, who your family is, or what sort of connections to powerful people you have.
In this community and family called Hoadley Evangelical Missionary Church, we are all equal under Christ and we are expected to submit to one another with Christ as our common authority.
The focus of this instruction from Paul is not on the privilege or dominance of the husband or on the submission or obedience of the wife. Paul is not suggesting a hierarchy of power or authority in a marriage relationship.
We are all called to live in mutual submission under the authority of Christ, with the husband taking on the responsibility to love his wife and care for her in the humble and servant way of Jesus, which is what “headship” really means.
And submission really means to receive the husband’s care for her and not be seeking other sources of security and intimacy.
The most stunning aspect of this instruction comes when you understand what would have been the normal relationship between men and women in that society.
Christianity brought with it a significant change in status for women. Women within the church had more freedom than what was common outside the church and it would have been offensive for non-Christians.
So, what Paul might have meant by “submit to your own husbands as you to do the Lord,” is to not flaunt her freedom as it might have been tempting to do. This is not because her husband is lord over her but because he is an equal recipient of the freedom Christ offers through a relationship with him.
And in the same way, husbands should not neglect their wives due to their newfound identity and purpose. A man’s primary human relationship is still his wife, not the people in the church. This is why Paul writes later on that it is better not to marry and a reason why some believe that a Christian minister should not be married.
Paul draws the connection here between the marriage relationship and the relationship between Christ and the church. As Christ’s bride and body, he loves us sacrificially, and serves us as the one responsible for our well-being.
In response, we receive his love for us and honour him in how we live as his people. This is where the analogy between marriage and our relationship with Christ breaks down.
The way we honour Christ is to obey and submit to him as the superior authority in our lives. For the wife, the husband is not her superior authority, rather it is Christ.
The connection to marriage is that Christ loves us in the way a perfect husband would love his wife and that we as Christ’s bride are to receive his love and honour him by how we live.
If we are going to thrive as a community of God’s people, we will only do it in submission to Christ as the head of this body called the church.
Submission means accepting his love for us and extending that sacrificial love to one another so that the whole body is kept healthy. This is how we honour him.
The question and challenge for us is, how are we living as people loved and united by Christ? Again, this is a question worth exploring, but we will continue on to how the church is the people and priests of God.
People and Priests of God
The church is once again connected to the story of Israel in the same way that the Tabernacle and Temple are connected. The priests served in the Tabernacle. They represented God and upheld the laws that governed the sacrificial system.
The Israelites were chosen by God to represent him to the world through the way they lived. In Exodus 19:6, God said to the Israelites, “you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’”
Peter’s words in 2:5 are almost an exact quote when he writes, “you… are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.”
A priest is someone who helps others embody holiness.
In the times of the Tabernacle and Temple, they did that through enacting the laws given to them by God through Moses.
Lynn and I are reading Leviticus and are at the part where God gives instructions on dealing with impurities. It was the priests job to help the people be cleansed from their impurities so they could return to fellowship with God.
This section of the Bible can be easy to avoid or skip over. But it would have been tremendously meaningful for the Israelites to have a way back to God when they have been made impure.
An interesting thing about Jesus is that he reversed whatever impurity he came into contact with. And we are meant to do the same.
Anyone who calls on Jesus for salvation is given the identity and responsibility of a priest. This means we help one another and others embody holiness by living in the way of Jesus.
We do this individually, but more effectively as a community. People will know God when they see how we love and serve each other.
Our priestly duty includes making every possible attempt to be agents of reconciliation. When someone has done wrong, we forgive, offer grace, and extend an invitation to be brought back into fellowship.
This is a very difficult thing to do when there has been a betrayal of trust. And some relationships might be so damaged as to be irreparable this side of eternity. But, God honours our desire to be agents of reconciliation, even if we don’t experience the fullness of it in this lifetime.
The identity of priest also means making known to our community the gospel of Jesus. We embody this in how we live, but we are also prepared to tell people about Jesus when the opportunity presents itself.
As I said in my message about sharing the gospel, this is best done from an overflow of gratitude and love for Jesus rather than a position of guilt or fear.
The unique thing about priests is that they are the closest ones to the presence of God. They literally smelled like the Tabernacle because they spent all their time in the midst of the smoke and fire.
I imagine people wondering, as they saw the priests walking around among them, what the experience must be like to be so close to the presence of God.
Do people wonder that about us?
Do they look at the way we live and ask themselves what it must be like to be so close to God?
The question and challenge here is, how are we embracing our identity as God’s priests?
Conclusion
So, we have three questions to consider.
How are we cultivating a community in which the Spirit is welcome and active?
How are we living as people loved and united by God as the bride of Christ?
How are we embracing our identity as God’s priests?
Each of us will have a different answer to these questions as individuals. But today we are considering the communal and relational way in which we follow Jesus. And the questions are all practical.
How are we… welcoming the Spirit to dwell among us? …living as people loved by God through Christ? …embracing our identity as God’s priests?
I have just one suggestion for the how we can do these things and it all has to do with our Care Groups. I will beat this drum constantly because it’s a new rhythm and it will take a while for us to walk in step with the rhythm.
Look at the list of people in your Care Group as you consider these “How” questions. How can you pray for these people? How can you serve them? How can you help them embody holiness?
The answers may not come instantly, so keep asking.
When you think about inviting people to church, consider first how you have represented the church by being the dwelling place of the Spirit, the body and bride of Christ, and a priest of God.