Title Ephesians 02:19-22 The Templed People
Contents
Templed People (Ephesians 2:19-22)
A week has passed and the first week of the new year has passed. In the new year, I hope that God's blessings abound on your families and businesses.
As we approach the new year, we all come to think and resolve to live better than last year. Looking back on the past year as an immigrant, I am grateful that I was able to live a hard life, alleviating the feeling of alienation and loneliness from the mainstream society, because there is a church where I can worship together and a Korean community where I can share my brotherly love even though I have no choice but to live a lonely, difficult and anxious life. In the new year, the Bible tells us how to live as immigrants.
It seems that there were many people living in the Ephesus church to which Paul is writing at that time. They suffered persecution in their homeland and were scattered abroad. He did not fit into the mainstream, worked hard on the fringes, and lived by faith, but he lived in a sense of insecurity, loneliness, and alienation. To those who are in this reality, Paul says: The world treats you as foreigners and alienates you and makes you live on the outskirts, but they say you are one family before God and you are the people of the kingdom of heaven. A person who knows who he or she is is not shaken by the surrounding environment and people. .
In Paris, a prisoner dressed as a woman escaped from prison. The prisoner was a woman with no voice, gestures, and clothes, so the police were mobilized, but they could not catch him in disguise. However, they were arrested quite easily in the city center. He was suspected by the police because he had inadvertently passed by a dressmaker with fashion clothes hanging on it. The police wondered if he was really a woman, he couldn't just walk past the fashion room. Humans act according to who they are conscious of who they are. The escapee dressed as a woman, but because she was not aware that she was a woman, she ended up acting like a man.
A top mechanic was driving in the middle of the night and his car broke down and he was stopped on the road. No matter how much I tried to turn on the light, I couldn't find the cause. Then a car passing by stopped and offered to help. I'm proud of myself, but I asked. Then he looked at it for a moment and then tapped on one part and the car started. So who are you? I asked and he said HENRY FORD. I see many people in their lives, just like the first-class Mechanic, go their own way with the highest self-esteem and pride, and then lose their way and sit down exhausted with a hurting life. I went to a good school, got a good job, met a good spouse, and started my life, but I am not satisfied with that life. In a series of conflicts and pains, I have seen many people come out to God at the end. They saw peace and order come only after they let God rule their lives. We are happiest when we give our lives to God to rule.
Second, to say that we are God's people means that God is in charge of our lives. God created man and said it was really good. And God gave everything that He had made. Even today, God supplies precious and good things to those who live in obedience to God's will. Although we live a life of faith, there are many times when we do not distinguish between what we need and what we want. God provides for his children what they need.
But the writer of James says that the reason we ask and do not find is that we seek with greed. So the Lord tells us to ask for our daily bread. Because it is absolutely necessary. “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). These are the things you need.
Dear saints, do you live with the faith that you are God's children and God's people? On this faith, God will provide for you. If your parents on earth are evil, yet know how to give them good things, the Lord says, how much more will your Father in heaven give you the best things. Then how should we live as God's people? God is directing our lives today, but He is asking us to uphold the norms as His children and people.
After Luke 19:1, Zacchaeus was a dwarf in the city of Jericho who was neglected his whole life and lived in pain with bitterness. After becoming a publican, he built up wealth and fame like honey in order to compensate for the pain complex and wounds he had throughout his life. However, there was no joy or satisfaction in his life, neither reward nor happiness. He worked harder to make up for the loneliness and alienation, but as he got older, he became more lonely and empty. One day he heard that Jesus was coming to Jericho and went out to see him, but he could not see him. So he climbed a nearby mulberry tree to see Jesus from a distance. Jesus, who was passing by, called him. "Zacchaeus, come down quickly. I must stay at your house today!" The Lord meets a heart with earnestness. It doesn't matter what the past is. Today is important. When Zacchaeus met the Lord, his life was changed.
Until now, his life has been a life of fighting, stealing, and building up for himself. It was a lonely life where I had no relationships with other people and only stood by myself. That's how he built his life. However, when his life was changed in Jesus, a change began to take place in the life he had lived until now. She began to share her own with joy. His wealth, fame, and status were another form of himself as a dwarf. It was rather ugly because it was accumulated through wounds and pain. However, now that his life, which had been shrunken like a dwarf, was opened up by Jesus, he began to spread out the things he had grabbed and share. His life began to be built anew with his brothers and sisters around him as a healthy life.
Beloved, the foundation of true joy and happiness in life is in the right relationship. First, the right relationship between the Lord and me, and the right relationship with our neighbors. In this right relationship, we will be built into the holy temple of God as healthy and unshakable people of God, citizens of God, and families. God's love resides in the life of right relationship and we are becoming a temple.
In the coming new year, we earnestly hope that these images will be filled in ourselves, in our homes, and in the church. I hope that the beautiful testimonies that are being built into the temple abound.