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GOOD FENCES MAKE BAD CHRISTIANS #5

ARE YOU A GOOD BRICK?

If you're a Baptist, and I'm an Adventist, and the guy across the street is a Methodist, and the preacher coming on this station right after me is a Pentecostal, what in the world kind of unity is that? The book of Ephesians de-scribes the Christian church as ONE big, beautiful building.

If you ever get a member of my home denomination, the Adventist Church, to do some sanctified bragging — except for "boasting in the Lord," of course — you'll probably hear two names. We all like to talk about Desmond T. Doss, World War II Medal of Honor winner, and then John Weidner, also a legendary hero from that global conflict. In our humble opinion, Doss's story is better than Saving Private Ryan, because this conscientious objector, who served in the U.S. Army as a medic, singlehandedly saved 75 lives one day in the Pacific campaign, lowering man after man to safety over a cliff while Japanese machine gun fire raked the island terrain all around him. And Weidner and his Dutch-Paris Christian escape network helped more than 1000 Jewish refugees and Allied airmen get out of occupied France right under the Gestapo's nose . . . a story equally as enthralling as Schindler's List. I've been honored to meet both men, and those were two proud and humbling moments, believe me.

In the foreword to the Weidner book, a Dr. W. A. Visser ‘T Hooft, General Secretary for 28 years of the World Council of Churches, writes with great passion about what his friend John achieved in stealing so many prizes from the Nazis. Why did he put his life on the line so often, facing torture from the Gestapo gendarmes time and time again? Here's what he says:

"Why did he leave on these perilous journeys, each of which could easily have been the very last, as if he were going on a vacation trip? For those who have worked with him the answer is quite clear. He had that directness, that simplicity of faith, which made him realize that he was at all times in the hands of a loving God. He did not talk much about that. But he could show real astonishment when it was suggested to him that life in the Resistance movement was an uncertain affair. Uncertain? Not for one who read his Bible and knew about the divine care." Please notice, now, this final sentiment. "And it was because of this dimension of John's life that he, a Seventh-day Adventist, and I, the Reformed pastor, regarded ourselves not only as comrades in a common human cause, but also as fellow citizens of the Eternal City."

Isn't that amazing? And how appropriate that it is dated: "Geneva, April, 1966," the year author Herbert Ford published his story, Flee the Captor. Because Geneva was so often the "eternal city" of safety as Weidner and his desperate refugees slipped through barbed-wire fences and over into the freedom of Switzerland and the soft night lights of that beautiful lakeside city.

If you've been with us here in Ephesians 2, you already see how the story fits. Because the apostle Paul has been writing about how the gospel of Jesus Christ unites all men and women; He "destroys the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility." Not only did the Christian message permit this Adventist and this Reformed pastor to work shoulder-to-shoulder in defeating their common enemy, but after the war it was the grace of Jesus Christ which also allowed for so many victims of the Holocaust to forgive their Nazi enemies. There are many, many Corrie-ten-Boom-type stories like that around, as you're well aware.

But today as we try — so prematurely, it feels like — to finish up with this great piece of Scripture and move on to chapter three, there's a beautiful closing metaphor. Reading together beginning in verse 19, here it is:

"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens," Paul writes, "but fellow citizens with God's family and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone."

The NIV text notes for verse 19 suggest that this concept of God's household was "familiar imagery."

"The household in ancient times," they write, "was what we today might call an ‘extended family.'"

Mom, Dad, kids, aunts, grandma, a couple of visiting cousins: three and four generations all living happily and successfully together under one roof. And the marvelous point is this, friend: as you and I, one by one, join the Body of Christ, as we are converted and become Christians, we immediately move into this great, global family. This extended, loving network. You have a place. I have a place.

I think any Christian who has ever traveled overseas has experienced the miracle of seeing 50 or a hundred fellow believers — people he's never met — standing at the airport with big signs. "Welcome, Lonnie!" "Welcome, Jose!" "Welcome, whoever!" I've had that happen to me all my life, just because they're Christians and I'm one too. It's better than having a American Express gold card, believe me. But listen . . . this is just the tip of the iceberg. Because when we join the family of God, this great "extended family," we also become a part of what the Bible seems to describe here as a magnificent castle. All to the glory of God, of course, the Church of Jesus is a planet-encircling, generation-spanning tower of light, a beacon to the watching universe.

Listen to how The Message paraphrases this same passage:

"You're no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You're no longer strangers or outsiders. You BELONG here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone." And I love what comes next: "God is building a HOME. He's using us all — irrespective of how we got here — in what He is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now He's using YOU, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds it all together."

And friend, I want you to sense how important it is to this building that YOU are a part. You're not just a generic brick in a back wall someplace. You hold a critical spot in the edifice; God needs you exactly where you are: a wall, a chimney, a section of beautiful carpeting, a piece of the solid roof, a delightful bit of stained glass. The King James Version says that this building is "fitly framed together." The architecture is stunning to behold. And speaking of great Parthenon-like architecture, Bible commentaries give us a bit of a Greek lesson right here.

"Surarmologe , or, ‘to join together fitly' . . . [means that] the church is not a pile of stones come together by accident; it has form and coherence. Each stone has its proper place. The stability of the structure depends on careful planning."

And what does God do with this incredible building called the Christian Church? He lives in it. He works through it. He heals the world through the loving touch of the Church: your denomination and my denomination, your local congregation and mine, and also this great invisible radio audience. Verse 23 of Ephesians 2 closes with this:

"And in Him [Jesus] you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit."

Friend, what kind of house "part" are you? Are you solid? Are you, as a brick, supportive of the bricks next to you? Are you seeking unity with them? If you're part of a beautiful tile pattern, do you try to blend together in Christian love with the rest of the flooring?

There's a beautiful metaphor at the beginning of C. S. Lewis' book, Mere Christianity. He didn't want to fight and bicker over doctrinal differences in a book with that title, of course — as important as those discussions might be. And it's so moving to notice how he, too, borrows from this Ephesians two metaphor. He paints this picture of the house, the beautiful building – and that building is the Christian Church. When a person comes to the Lord Jesus Christ, and is converted, they enter the house. In a sense, they're standing in the hallway. They're saved; they're a part of the Body, but they still are standing in the generic hallway of Christianity. In the ROOMS, Lewis writes, are the churches. Mine and yours. I'm been thankful all of my life to be a Bible-believing Adventist Christian; that's the room I chose to dwell in. In the rooms, Lewis writes, are chairs and beds and tables and meals and fireplaces. Most everything happens in the rooms. It's important to expeditiously choose a room, to get into a fellowship where truth is taught and Jesus is uplifted and people are determined to walk toward the New Jerusalem.

"You must keep on praying for light," he writes, "and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one: not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language, the questions should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?' but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this?'" Then he quietly adds: "When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

Are you doing all of that? If you haven't moved in yet, we can order up the Mayflower van for you right now.