Sermon on Ephesians 2:11-22, for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost, "What is the Church?"
Sermon Outline: 1. Monuments of time and history: Great Wall, Pyramids, or Brooklyn Bridge. Took a lot of “blood, sweat, and tears” to build them. Mammoth designs and dangers in construction often meant the injury or death of the workers. Impressive; standing many hundreds or even thousands of years, but time and weather endlessly wear away at them and age them. With ongoing maintenance the effects of time might be stalled—but eventually, even the great monuments of time will succumb to rubble and dust. 2. Another structure: far surpassing all others in glory—the Christian Church. Built for the glory of God, not the glory of man. Stretching through time and to eternity—a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to build. Not talking about bricks, mortar, stone, and wood. Not about church buildings. That’s not the “Church” I’m talking about. Living structure, living stones, members of the body of Christ. Jesus’ blood, sweat ...