The Family of God

Part 1:

    Today we are celebrating several holidays: Children’s Day, Parents’ Day, Teachers’ Day, and Family Day - and while you’re at it, you can throw in Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day.  We had some debate about how we should deal with these secular holidays in our Christian worship service.  However, as we began to think about our series on the Church, we remembered the Christian teaching that God is our Father and that we are God’s family together. 
    Listen to how Paul explains this in Ephesians 2.

 19 So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners.  You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people.  You are members of God’s family.  20 Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.  And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself.  21 We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.  22 Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.

    We are one family, one house.  God has carefully joined us together in Christ, so that together we are a temple for God’s Spirit.  When we are together and committed to Jesus, something amazing and mysterious happens.  Somehow, our togetherness and our foundation in Jesus makes God’s Spirit real among us. 
    One of the beautiful things of God’s family is that we are all in God’s family - whether we are single, married, divorced, or widowed.  No one is excluded.  If you have put your faith in Christ, God has given you a new family.  We are all related to each other - like it or not! ...

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