This Salvation Joins Us Together (The Application)

Text: Eph 2:19-22

Sermon: This Salvation Joins Us Together (God’s Vision for the Church).

Outline

#1, We are Citizens in God’s Kingdom (2:19)

• Together we exist to serve and worship the king.

#2, We are Members in God’s Household (2:19)

• Together we exist to enjoy fellowship with the king and his family.

#3, We are God’s Building Project (2:20-22)

• God himself works and lives among us!

The Application

Think through this with me,

In our country, citizens are tied together by a social contract. . . . but God’s new nation is not a republic, not a democracy.

• It’s a kingdom—and in a kingdom, the citizens are connected through their allegiance to the king.
• We serve the king together; we obey the king together; we worship the king together.

But God says we are more than citizens in his kingdom, we are members in his household. So that . . .

• We enjoy the presence of the king together, we eat at his table together, we love the kind and he loves us. . . . we grow to know, love, and enjoy the king as our Father as we also grow to know, love, and enjoy one another.

Together we are a building—a Temple—in which the glory of God dwells.

• His royal presence enters our lives and takes up residence in us and connects us to one another.

Here we have God’s vision for the church . . . for our church. It’s a vision for a “better future.” In your head, you and I must carry this image of what the future could be, and let this image drive us as a church. Meditate on this vision:

God has put us together to serve: This means ABBC exists to serve & worship the Father through the Son by his Spirit.

• Are you with us serving according to your gifts?
• Are you regularly and consistently here to worship with us?

God has put us together for fellowship: We exist to know, love, and enjoy God together & God has put us together to know, love, and encourage one another: that’s fellowship.

• Are you growing spiritually? Can you honestly say that you are growing to know, to love, and to enjoy God through Jesus?
• Are you making strong efforts to know, love, and encourage the men and women sitting around you? I.e., are you praying together, studying the Bible together, eating together, sharing with one another, helping one another, talking about life and God and sin and struggle and the Gospel together?

God has put us together to work among us: Therefore, we should expect and ask God to work every time we gather.

• Are you asking God, pleading with God, to do a great work here at ABBC?