From the MLJ Archive

Host: The words to which I should like to call your attention this morning are to be found in Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, in the second chapter and the 19th verse. The 19th verse in the second chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians.

Host: Now, therefore, you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God. And indeed, the great statement goes on to say, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy Temple in the Lord. In whom he also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Host: Now here the Apostle comes to state positively the glories and privileges and advantages of membership of the Christian Church. That's been his theme indeed right through the chapter. He's been concerned so far to show how that has been brought about. What was necessary before pagans like the Ephesians had been, could possibly become Christians and thus enjoy membership and fellowship together in the Christian Church with those amongst the Jews who likewise had become Christians through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Host: Having thus dealt with the mechanism or the way in which it has been brought about, the great Apostle now contemplates the thing itself and he's anxious that these Ephesians should enjoy it with him and should come to understand it and realize what it means. He knows, as he told them in the first chapter, that this is only possible as long as the eyes of their understanding are enlightened.

Host: It's quite impossible apart from that. The church is but an institution to people whose eyes are not enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Oh, they may like it as an institution. They may glory in it as an institution, but that isn't the thing the Apostle would have these people see. He prays that the eyes of their understanding may be enlightened.

Host: That they may know what is the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. The exceeding greatness of his power to us word that believe. And here he is expanding and expounding it all. Very well, he says, let's look at it together. Let's realize what we are. Well, our last Sunday morning we began our consideration of this verse by showing how the Apostle stresses the vital importance of our being absolutely certain that we are in this position.

Host: We cannot hope to realize the privileges of the position unless we know what the position is and unless we are quite sure that we are in it. It's all very well to hear about marvelous privileges certain people have, but if you don't belong to them and if you don't have them, well, therefore it all leaves you as you were. Therefore, we saw the importance of knowing for certain that we are no more strangers and foreigners.

Host: The importance as I venture to put it, of knowing that we no longer live on a passport, but that we really have our birth certificates. That we really do belong. Very well, if we do belong, let us go on to consider the privileges which we enjoy as members truly of the Christian Church.

Host: Now, it's not surprising that the great Apostle emphasizes this. Surely we all must agree that nearly all our problems in the Christian life are due to the fact that we fail to realize the privilege of being a Christian. If we only realized what it is to be a Christian and a member of the Christian Church, I suggest that most of our problems, if not all of them, would be immediately solved.

Host: If we but could rise to the height of our high calling in Christ Jesus and realize what we have in this position. Oh, the little pinpricks and problems, they'd just become unthinkable. They'd fall off, they'd be unworthy of consideration. Now, that is in a sense, the argument of every New Testament Epistle.

Host: Every epistle, of course, is written to churches, to Christian members of Christian churches. And what every one of them does is just what I've been saying. They all start by giving us a picture of our position as members of the Christian Church. And then having done that, they say, well, now in the light of that, this is obviously how you've got to live. That's the analysis of every New Testament Epistle.

Host: There is surely nothing more important today, therefore, from every standpoint than for us to realize these things. It's important personally for us. I say that most of your trials and troubles and tribulations and problems would be viewed in an entirely different manner if you just really saw yourself as you are in Christ.

Host: And still more important, if the whole church only realized what she is, we would already be on the highway to true revival and a mighty spiritual awakening. It's because we failed to realize these things that we don't even pray for revival as we ought and don't look for it and long for it.

Host: Very well then, it's not surprising, I say, the Apostle emphasizes it so much. And he does so in order to put it plainly and clearly to these Ephesians and to us. He puts it in the form of a number of pictures. Here, you see, we've got three pictures stated together almost at once. The Church is a great state, a kingdom.

Host: Ah, yes, but it's also a family. Ah, yes, but it's also a temple. Immediately, you see, he gives us three pictures. He's already given us one earlier on where he compares the church to a body. One body, one new man. And you'll find that in the fifth chapter of this Epistle to the Ephesians, he uses yet another illustration. For there he says that the relationship between the church and the Lord Jesus Christ is the relationship between the bride, a bride and a bridegroom.

Host: Now, it's interesting to notice that the Apostle thus uses a variety of pictures and illustrations. And it's quite clear as to why he does so. Any one illustration is not enough. The truth is so great, it's so many sided, it's so glorious, so that he has to multiply his pictures and images. And each one of them will convey some particular aspect, will enable us to see some peculiar facet of truth which is not so well conveyed by the other illustrations and pictures.

Host: Very well then, but let's carry them all in our minds because we must realize that one, any one, I say, doesn't exhaust the whole teaching. Well, now we come this morning to the first picture. You are no more strangers and foreigners, says the Apostle. Well, what are you then? Fellow citizens with the saints.

Host: That's the first picture. What does this tell us? Well, it's very rich teaching. He compares the church here to a city or a state or a kingdom. Now, it's not surprising that the Apostle should have done this. In those ancient times there were those state cities or city states. Certain great cities were actual states in and of themselves.

Host: The Apostle boasted of the fact on one occasion that he was a citizen of no mean city. He had been brought up in Tarsus. And there were then these kind of city states, but over and above that, of course, there were great states. Great kingdoms, great empires. The Apostle at the time of writing this letter was probably a prisoner in Rome, the very metropolis and center and nerve of the great Roman Empire.

Host: There was the capital city, but she had her people scattered abroad through the then civilized world with the governors and these important functionaries carrying out the behests and the orders of the central government and ultimately the emperor. And it's not surprising that the Apostle, therefore, should suddenly have thought that the Christian Church is like that. She's like a great state, a great empire, a great kingdom.

Host: And therefore, he uses the illustration to convey some very precious teaching to these Ephesians. But of course, this isn't a new idea that suddenly came to the Apostle Paul. This is an idea that is found running right through the Bible. And it's a very important conception. There are great sections of the scriptures that we simply cannot understand at all unless we grasp this particular idea.

Host: Now, what God was doing in the call of Abraham, which, of course, is one of the great turning points in history and the real beginning of the children of Israel. But God said to Abraham was that out of him he would make a great nation for himself. Now there the thing begins. Until that point, God deals with the whole world, as it were. The first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis deal with the whole world and the history of the whole world and all its people.

Host: But at the beginning of chapter 12 in Genesis, in the call of Abraham, we begin to deal specially and specifically with the history of one nation. And God called Abraham and said that out of him he would make a nation for himself. There at once you're introduced to this whole idea that God's people are God's kingdom. God's nation, this whole conception of the state.

Host: And there you noticed in that 19th chapter of Exodus, we had the same thing repeated, God told Moses, just before the giving of the 10 Commandments and the moral law, that the people were to realize that they were a holy nation. That they were God's citizens, that they belonged to him, that he was their king and they were his people.

Host: And there it is, of course, controlling the whole outlook of Israel. Before God took them into the Promised Land, they were to realize this. And, of course, the whole tragedy of Israel was that they failed to realize it. They never realized just this very thing, that they were God's kingdom. A kingdom of priests, a holy nation unto God. And because of that failure, all their tragedies descended upon them and they cut the sorry figure that we see described in the Old Testament books.

Host: But again, if you go to the book of Daniel, you find this expounded in a most amazing manner. You must read it for yourselves. I can't turn aside to expound that this morning. But it's the great message of the book of Daniel. It's all a question of kingdoms, fight amongst kingdoms, the relationship of this kingdom of God to these other kingdoms, these beasts that are going to arise representing these other powers, Media or Persia, Babylon, Greece, Rome, etc. These other kingdoms and this kingdom. It's the whole message of the book.

Host: Indeed, the whole message of all the prophets is just to impress upon the children of Israel their peculiar relationship to God as citizens of his eternal kingdom. And then, of course, as you come to the New Testament, you'll find it's a central theme in the teaching of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Look at his parables of the kingdom. He always thought in terms of the kingdom.

Host: He said he'd come to establish a kingdom. He was a king. He was crucified for saying that in a sense, on the purely secular level. All his teaching is about the kingdom. And people enter into his kingdom. He starts by saying it, you remember, to a man like Nicodemus, you must be born again. You can't even see the kingdom unless you are and so on.

Host: It's integral to his whole message, the message of the kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount was the manifest of that kingdom and so on. Well, there it is. And here it is, I say, in the writings of this Apostle Paul. You'll find it in many of his epistles. You find it in the epistle, the first epistle of the Apostle Peter. He quotes the very words of Exodus 19.

Host: He says, you were not a people but are now the people of God. You were a holy nation, a peculiar people. He applies all that to members of the Christian Church. He's writing to the strangers scattered abroad. It doesn't matter. As members of the church, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, he says, that you may show forth his praises who has called you out of darkness into his most marvelous light.

Host: There it is. And, of course, as you go on to the book of Revelation, you'll find exactly the same thing. Very well. You see what an important doctrine this is in the Bible. And therefore, as Christian people, it behooves us to study it and to grasp it, to apply it to ourselves that we may glory in it and rejoice in it as we are meant to do.

Host: Well, very well, what is the teaching? Well, let us look at it like this. What, what does this tell us about ourselves, therefore? What kind of definition of the church does this supply us with? Well, it's quite simple, isn't it? If you take this illustration of the state or the or the kingdom or the city. The first thing it obviously emphasizes is that we are a people who are separated from and made distinct from all others.

Host: There's no need to argue this, is there? The ancient cities all had a wall around them, the city wall. You can see relics and remnants of these walls in various cities. They're still a part of this city of London called London Wall. And you know of other cities where you've got the same thing. What, what was the wall for? Well, to separate them.

Host: It shuts them in, it shuts others out. And there were gates leading through the wall into the city and they were shut at a given hour and they were opened at another hour the next morning. The whole conception of the city, the polity, means separation. Drawing out of, a setting apart and a surrounding and an encasing, if you like.

Host: Or if you don't think of it in terms of cities, but prefer to think of it in terms of countries or of states, there is always a boundary to a state, a boundary to every country. It may be the sea, it may be a river, it may be some artificially determined line which is drawn by authorities. It doesn't matter what it is.

Host: But there are always boundaries. And you can't pass from one state to another without crossing the boundary. You pass your customs, you show your passport, your goods are examined. A boundary. You can't think of a state or a city or a kingdom without boundaries. And the business of boundaries, I say, is to say to certain people, so far but no further. And to say to those within the boundaries, this is your city, this is your country, this is the land to which you belong.

Host: You see the importance of this doctrine, my friends. You can't be a Christian without being a separated person. You can't be in the kingdom of God and in the kingdom of the world at the same time. There is this fundamental either or, whether we like it or not.

Host: This same Apostle reminds the Galatians that God in the Lord Jesus Christ has separated us from this present evil world. In writing to the Colossians, he puts it that we have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son. What a tremendously important conception this is.

Host: If we are Christians, we are separated people. We are no longer like everybody else. Oh, but you say, isn't that being pharisaical? Isn't it being proud? Not at all. The Pharisee did separate himself from everybody else. It was the way in which he did it that was wrong. It wasn't the separation that was wrong. It was the spirit in which he did it.

Host: I'm not advocating the better than thou attitude, but what I am saying is this, that as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, I am different from those who are not citizens of that kingdom. You see how ready we are to assert this on the national level.

Host: I'm an Englishman or whatever else it is. We are very careful to emphasize the distinction that we are not something else. And yet when it comes here, people object to it. That's narrow, they say. That's dividing. But let's be consistent, let's be logical, above all, let's be scriptural. Whatever we may think about it, I say, the fact is that as a Christian, as a member of the church, you have been taken out of the world. You're separated.

Host: And unless you realize it and rejoice in it, surely there is very good reason for your questioning the fact as to whether you're a Christian at all. It's basic, it's fundamental. It's one of the first things that is absolutely obvious. A people set apart. A city wall, separation. But come, let's go on to something else, the second thing that comes out of that of necessity is this.

Host: They are therefore people who are bound together by a common allegiance to a king and to authority and to law and to a way of life. That's the second thing that's always true of a city, a state or a kingdom. Being thus separated, we are separated for certain specific objects and purposes and they are as I've just been indicating.

Host: There was always the head to a city, might have been a king or he might be somebody appointed, but there was always a head. There is always the head to a state. There is always a king in a kingdom. There's no sense in talking about a kingdom unless you have a king. There must be a head to a kingdom. And the citizens of a kingdom are those who are bound together by a common allegiance.

Host: To this state, to this king, to this supreme authority. President, whatever he may be, there is the head and as citizens, we all acknowledge that together. There is this common bond, this common allegiance, we have these common interests together there. And you see the importance of that when you apply it to the church.

Host: We all acknowledge the same head, the same king, eternal, everlasting. We've got these common interests. We recognize the same laws. All this is preliminary. I shall work it out again in detail. But of course, because of this common allegiance which we all share to the same king, to the same head, to the same laws and authorities, we have, of course, a common allegiance also to one another.

Host: Because obviously, in view of all this, we have common interests. There are certain things that are peculiar to us within the state of the kingdom which do not apply to other people. This is so elementary that I needn't stress it at all. It's true of every single nation or country. Now, when you bring all this again to the church, its importance and its truth is surely self-evident.

Host: It is vital, of course, that we should realize and remember, as I've said, that we are not simply speaking about the external, visible church. The Apostle, in the whole context of this statement, makes it plain and clear that he's thinking spiritually. He's already done so. But let us never lose sight of this fact. We are not simply talking about the church as an organization, a visible organization. The Apostle's whole idea is mystical, it's organic.

Host: It expresses itself, of course, externally, but the vital thing is this internal principle. For unless it's possible to be a member of the visible external church and yet to be completely ignorant of Christ, not to know him, not to be truly vitally related to him. There have been many such people, there are still such people. They've been brought up to it. It's tradition. It's something that it's a part of the social round or a fashion, but it isn't living, it isn't real. Their heart is in the world, not in the church. I'm not talking about that.

Host: The Apostle is using an illustration. The great tragedy, in a sense, that took place in the history of the church was when the Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. And this whole admixture between church and state began and it's befogged and confused the issue ever since. This idea of separation has become lost. And people have thought that there are Christian countries and everybody in that country must be a Christian, not on this showing.

Host: No, no. It isn't merely the external. What it means is this. It means that as Christians, we are citizens of Christ's kingdom. Well, where is Christ's kingdom? Well, Christ's kingdom is wherever Christ reigns. Christ's kingdom can be in the heart of an individual, therefore. He reigns in the heart of all who belong to him and who have submitted themselves to him.

Host: Christ's kingdom is on earth and in heaven, in his people. His kingdom is not of this world, it's invisible, but it's real. Christ's reign and rule and authority, wherever it is, that's his kingdom. That's the thing about which the Apostle is speaking. He is our prophet, our priest and our king.

Host: And all who recognize his rule and who bow to him in allegiance are citizens of his eternal kingdom. And you see the value and the importance of looking at it like this. For what it tells us is this, that here and now we can be citizens of that kingdom which is going to last forever and ever. We enter it now, we shall continue in it through all eternity.

Host: Very well then, there we've got the definition of the church and of ourselves as members of the church, as citizens of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. I must say just a word, in spite of all that we've been considering, as to how you become members of this kingdom. As to how we ever become citizens of this great polity, this politos, if you like.

Host: I needn't keep you. Our Lord, as I hinted just now, put it once and for all to Nicodemus. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Host: Unless he be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God, but you notice you can't even see it. Leave alone enter it. Unless you are born again. Nicodemus hadn't understood that. He was a master of Israel. He goes to our Lord and as it were, he says, well, now, I rather like that kingdom of yours. I'd like to belong to that. Here are my credentials. I'm a master, I'm a great man, I'm a great teacher. Look at them, can you take me in?

Host: Stand back, says our Lord. While you are producing your credentials, there is no entry for you here. You've got to be born again, you've got to become as a little child. Unless he be converted and become as little children, you shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Host: That's the only way of entry. But may I put it to you like this? I referred just now to the fact that the Apostle Paul was a freeman and a free citizen of the city of Tarsus. You remember that interesting incident in the life of Paul when he was almost killed by a mob in Jerusalem and the captain of the Roman legionary sent down his troops to deliver him.

Host: And then the captain and Paul began to have a conversation, and to the amazement of the captain he discovers that Paul is a Roman citizen. And he says, you are a Roman citizen. He said, you know, I am and with a great price obtained I this freedom. Paul says Paul, but I was born free. I want to borrow both those ideas because they both come into the way in which you and I become citizens of this kingdom.

Host: By nature, we all belong to the kingdom of the devil. We are under the dominion of Satan. As I've quoted Paul already in the first first chapter of Colossians, we have to be translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son. Yes, but the question is, how can I ever come out of the kingdom of the devil? He's my master, he's my Lord, I'm his slave, I belong to him. How can I ever come out of that?

Host: There's only one answer. I must be bought out of it. I must be purchased out of it. He demands a great price before he let me go. But thank God, it's happened. You are not your own, says Paul to the Corinthians. You have been bought with a price, with a great price obtained I this freedom, says the captain. And I say the same thing this morning.

Host: I've obtained my freedom out of the kingdom of darkness at the cost, at the price of the precious blood of Christ. That's why I invite you to the communion, to remind you of that. It was because he shed his blood for me that I'm delivered out of it. And then the other aspect, yes, says Paul, but I was born free. And it isn't enough that Christ died for me, it's essential, but over and above that, I must be born of the spirit, born anew. Given a second birth.

Host: And again, in Christ, and by the spirit, I have that. That's how you enter the kingdom, my friend. Not because your father and mother were Christians, not because you're brought up in this country, not because you're living a certain kind of life. All such credentials are not recognized. You'll never get out of the grip of Satan along that line.

Host: It is Christ alone who can ransom you. And he came and gave his life a ransom for many. He said so himself. It's taught everywhere in the scripture. He buys you out. He gives you the birth that sends you in. And so, with a great price obtained I this freedom. And by a new birth, I am a citizen of the kingdom of God.

Host: Very well, there is a vital matter. We leave it at that. The Apostle rarely has already been expounding it. Let me come then to my third heading, which is this. The privileges of our citizenship of this glorious kingdom. Ah, we are all interested in privileges, aren't we?

Host: You know the sort of men who likes to boast that he's got them. He's well in with so and so. He can introduce you, he says. Privileges. And how we want them. How we like to have them. Privileges, the whole world is mad on privileges today. It's pathetic, it's the result of sin.

Host: But if you're interested in privileges, listen to this. What are the privileges of citizenship? Well, the first and the greatest privilege is this. Our King. People boast about their citizenship, about their countries.

Host: And these are the things that they quote. They quote their history, the great heroes. They put up monuments. They write about them in books. Alfred the Great, marvelous. I belong to a country where such a man lived and reigned. And so on and so forth. Down you come. It's all right. But we have a king, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. The Son of God himself.

Host: That's the supreme privilege of being a Christian. Paul says that he was a citizen of no mean city, Tarsus. She wasn't. But she was nothing, of course, as compared with Rome herself, the celestial city, so called. But here, above all, we have the king himself. No emperor, the Son of God, God himself.

Host: The King. But then let us go on to consider the sphere of this kingdom. And this is a most entrancing and a most wonderful thought. The sphere, of course, of all earthly kingdoms is on earth. And the center, the capital is always on earth.

Host: We belong to Great Britain, to the Commonwealth of Nations. What used to be called the British Empire. And we boast of the fact that the citizens are scattered abroad throughout the earth, that the sun never sets on the British Empire. How extensive, how wonderful. But the capital city, London.

Host: And other nations have their boasts. London, Paris, New York, capital cities. Extensive sway, a wide domain and dominion. And oh, how nations take pride in that. How often have they fought because of that? Because of their rivalries and jealousies and so on. But it shows, you see, their appreciation of the privilege, the sphere, the extent of the kingdom.

Host: But you remember our blessed Lord defined and described his own kingdom in this respect? He says, my kingdom is not of this world. He spoke of it as the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of the hymns, if you like, on earth and in heaven. And this Apostle in writing to the Philippians, in the third chapter, verse 20, says this. He says, friends, our citizenship is in heaven.

Host: We are here on earth, but our citizenship is there. Somebody's translated it like this, we are a colony of heaven. Yes, we are on earth, but we are only a colony. There's the capital, not London, Paris, or New York, heaven itself. What is the city to which you and I as Christians belong this morning? Well, according to the book of Revelation, it's this. It's the New Jerusalem that is going to come down out of heaven and be established on earth as well, the New Jerusalem.

Host: That's where the king lives. That's where he is seated at the right hand of glory at this moment. Not an earthly Jerusalem, a heavenly and everlasting Jerusalem. What a privilege to belong to such a great empire. Such a wide domain. Oh, yes, but it's not only true to say that the headquarters, the capital is in heaven.

Host: The citizens of this kingdom are scattered throughout the whole earth. It includes people out of all nations and tribes and kingdoms. Peoples and tribes, as Isaac Watts has just put it, of every tongue dwell on his love. What a kingdom, what a sphere. Oh, the Roman was proud of the fact that he was a Roman citizen.

Host: Men belonging to great empires have always displayed the same pride. Christian people, do you realize that you're a citizen of such a kingdom as this this morning? Headquarters in heaven. The King eternal, immortal, everlasting, as your king. And citizens in every kingdom and land and continent and climb. Thank God, this congregation illustrates it. There are people here from all parts of the world. We are not all the same in color. It doesn't matter, it doesn't count. We belong to him, the headquarters is the same, the heavenly Jerusalem.

Host: What a glorious kingdom. What a privilege to be citizens in such a state. But come, let me mention one other thing. You notice our Apostle here mentions our fellow citizenship. Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints. It's not only the king, it's not only the sphere and the extent.

Host: Oh, consider your fellow citizens. The saints, he says, your fellow citizens with them. Who are they? Well, it isn't merely the nation of Israel, that isn't what he was thinking about, because they are not all Israel that are of Israel. He's thinking of the saints amongst the children of Israel. You know what Paul means here is what the man who wrote the 87th Psalm had in his mind in verses 5 and 6. Listen to how he puts it.

Host: He says, and of Zion it shall be said, this and that man was born in her. And the highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count when he writes up the people that this man was born there. You see what he means. On the natural level, we are proud to belong to a nation that could produce a Shakespeare. The land of Shakespeare. The land of Marlborough, the land of Wellington, the land of a Pitt, the land of a Cromwell, the land of these great men, the towering statesmen, as poets, as artists and so on and so forth.

Host: We are proud to belong to such a nation. Such and such a man was born here, bred in our land, bone of our bones, as it were, and flesh of our flesh. Oh, yes, but you see the Bible says, the Lord shall count when he writes up the people that this man was born there. These are the people to whom we belong. We are fellow citizens with Abraham.

Host: The greatest gentleman who's ever lived. The one who is distinguished by being called the friend of God. Isn't it a marvelous thing to believe, to and to understand and to know that you belong to the same city, the same kingdom as Abraham? And not only Abraham, but Moses and David and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and all those mighty men of the Old Testament. We now belong to them. We are in the same city. We have these common interests and common allegiance.

Host: And I must confess, it is to me perhaps one of the greatest thrills of all that I'm a fellow citizen with the Apostle Paul. That we belong to him, that we are one with him, that we are citizens together with him. We have his interests at heart, the same things that moved him are our things. And we shall see him and spend our eternity with him and all the other apostles and come down the running centuries.

Host: I am glad that I belong to the same company, the same land, the same kingdom as St. Augustine, and John Calvin, and Martin Luther, and John Knox, and the Puritans, and Whitfield, and Wesley, and all the rest. We are all one. We belong to that company of people. No longer to the world. We belong to this separate kingdom, this kingdom of priests, this holy nation.

Host: Oh, what am I trying to say? Let me read to you these verses again out of the 12th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews that put it so perfectly. You are come unto Mount Zion and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. That's where you've come this morning.

Host: We belong there. We are no longer a little kingdom on earth at the foot of the Mount Sinai. No, no, we've come to the heavenly Jerusalem and to this innumerable company of fellow citizens. But finally to make this picture complete, this is the ultimate privilege. To realize something of the future prospects and the future glory of the kingdom. It seems feeble this morning. The masses are outside the church and many a foolish Christian says, shall I go on with it? Is there anything in it? Shall I go to church or shan't I? I'll go once on Sunday, that's enough.

Host: Anybody who says that hasn't seen the meaning of this kingdom. We are a despised, rejected few perhaps today, but there's a glory coming. In thee, said God to Abraham at the beginning, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Count the stars in the heaven if you can, said God to Abraham, so great and greater will be thy posterity. Count the sands on the seashore. It's nothing in comparison with the citizens of my kingdom that's going to be worked out through you as the stars of the heavens.

Host: But listen to this, which was given to the Prophet Daniel, let me tell you about it. You remember that vision that was given of that great power, that great state that was going to dominate the world and to crush God's people? An image with a head of gold, and a breast and arms of silver, a belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, feet, part iron and part clay. The vision had been seen and he was towering the earth as a Colossus, but wait a minute.

Host: Thou sawest, says Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, until that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and break them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors. And the wind carried them away that no place was found for them. And the stone that smote the image became as a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Host: That's the kingdom of God, that starts as a despised stone, and is nothing face to face with a Colossus, but it smites him and smashes him and he disappears, and the stone becomes a great mountain that fills the whole earth. There is a day coming, says Paul to the Philippians, when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Host: Yes, says John in the book of Revelations, the seventh angel sounded. And there were great voices in heaven saying, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever and ever. And you and I are citizens of that kingdom. It's going to conquer, it's going to prevail. Jesus shall reign wherever the sun doth his successive journeys run.

Host: And did you know this? That you and I are going to reign with him? This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6. Do we not know that the saints shall judge the world? Know we not that we shall judge angels? It is a kingdom that cannot be shaken. It is a kingdom that shall have no end. It is the eternal, everlasting kingdom of God and of his Christ.

Host: And you and I, if we are Christians, are already in it, are already citizens of it. My dear friends, I've only started, you know. God willing, I'm going on to tell you some other more particular privileges next Sunday. These have all been general, but I beseech you in the name of God, lay hold on these.

Host: You are a citizen of a kingdom that cannot be moved, that cannot be shaken, which will destroy every other kingdom. And will continue throughout eternity. Thank God. We are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints. Amen.