back to index2017-01-14 Gospel Unity
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Even my wife and I, we feel the warmth of Korean, and already, maybe it's supernatural. 00:00:25.000 |
And it was just last week when we left our old church, Good Stewards Church, and I was there for 20 years. 00:00:38.000 |
And this morning, you know, as I was singing alongside you guys, and, you know, even thinking and praying through this morning, 00:00:46.000 |
we are so, so grateful that Berean is our new church family. 00:00:58.000 |
We would want to challenge you as much as you challenge us. 00:01:02.000 |
And, yeah, and I'm very, very grateful to Pastor Mark and Pastor Peter who have done nothing but encourage us. 00:01:18.000 |
But we're so grateful to the pastoral staff here. 00:01:23.000 |
We have an amazing pastoral staff here at Berean. 00:01:30.000 |
And hopefully, please, I hope to get to know you guys more as the years go. 00:01:36.000 |
So if you could turn with me to Ephesians 2, verse 11. 00:01:43.000 |
And we're going to be reading through verse 18. 00:01:47.000 |
But we'll touch on verse 19 through 22 as well towards the end. 00:03:25.000 |
Thank you for all of these hearts that are here. 00:03:29.000 |
God, even to entrust someone they don't know that well to come up on a pulpit 00:03:41.000 |
And so, God, I pray that it really would not be man, but it would be you, our God, 00:03:49.000 |
speaking through your Word, convicting through your Spirit. 00:03:54.000 |
And so, Father, it would not be just gauging a stranger up on a pulpit, 00:04:01.000 |
but, Father, truly engaging your Word and your Scripture as precious to us, 00:04:08.000 |
that it might affect and transform the way we live, the way we think, 00:04:15.000 |
Father, all of that would fall in line with who you are and how much we love you 00:04:21.000 |
Help me now as I preach this Word to be clear. 00:04:28.000 |
We're going to be talking a little bit about disunity today. 00:04:39.000 |
You know, I try to keep up with the news a little bit, and politics, oh, man, 00:04:43.000 |
it does nothing but bring disunity, doesn't it? 00:04:46.000 |
Even when we were looking at the presidential election in the fall, 00:04:51.000 |
we saw how it fractured, not just the disunity between someone like Hillary 00:04:55.000 |
Clinton and Donald Trump, but a fracturing of America happened, 00:05:04.000 |
We saw a great divide within an entire nation and with people. 00:05:08.000 |
This is disunity, and we know that there's disunity everywhere. 00:05:15.000 |
Even today there's technically still a war going on in North Korea and South 00:05:21.000 |
Since 1953 when the war ended, only seven times have there been an 00:05:25.000 |
opportunity for family members from North and South to be able to see each 00:05:29.000 |
other, and you can see the tangible effects of disunity and what might 00:05:40.000 |
There's the Boko Haram insurgency, a Syrian civil war. 00:05:46.000 |
There's the Libyan crisis, and there's a lot of stuff going on, and we can 00:05:49.000 |
see that there is disunity, conflict everywhere. 00:06:02.000 |
Recently there was the whole Black Lives Matter movement that brought 00:06:06.000 |
about division, institutionalized law enforcement and a black community, a 00:06:17.000 |
We hear of mass shootings, stabbings, explosions, even right here in 00:06:28.000 |
We see people clawing through each other to get to the top. 00:06:31.000 |
We see people gossiping and slandering and hating and killing in that way. 00:06:38.000 |
We see it in our workplaces, between employer and employee, between 00:06:46.000 |
We see disunity everywhere, even in our families. 00:06:49.000 |
Doors slammed and faces yelling and crying, misunderstandings, silent 00:06:55.000 |
treatments, divorces, tense holiday gatherings. 00:06:59.000 |
This is actually why this has been on my mind, because the holidays just 00:07:03.000 |
passed, but there's nothing like a holiday to show the disunity between a 00:07:09.000 |
People playing favorites, saying mean things to one another, things that 00:07:14.000 |
A disunity that might also fly under the radar. 00:07:17.000 |
They're not always apparent, but it's always present. 00:07:19.000 |
You go into any room with any group of people, and you're going to see 00:07:24.000 |
immediate disunity, division, scoping eyes, observation, constantly looking 00:07:35.000 |
And so it is that you'll also find disunity within the church. 00:07:40.000 |
Now, there's something about disunity that feels wrong, and there's 00:07:55.000 |
Well, it came from the very beginning when sin entered into the world, when 00:07:59.000 |
Adam and Eve made the decision to eat of the fruit of the knowledge -- tree 00:08:04.000 |
And immediately, as soon as they did that, there came a division between 00:08:10.000 |
And because of that, there became a division between man and woman, or 00:08:15.000 |
And that division, it wasn't just a slow, you know, gradual division type 00:08:21.000 |
It ramped up really fast, to the point where by the first set of kids, 00:08:29.000 |
This conflict, then, isn't rooted in disagreement. 00:08:37.000 |
This unity is actually rooted in this idea of sin. 00:08:43.000 |
The problem always has been and always will be sin. 00:08:47.000 |
That is what's going to bring about conflict. 00:08:50.000 |
Two people, two sides proclaiming that they are right in a given situation, 00:08:55.000 |
essentially proclaiming that my glory is of the utmost importance in this 00:08:59.000 |
situation when I'm arguing with you, fighting, clawing, killing to get it, 00:09:05.000 |
building, towering relational walls between one another. 00:09:15.000 |
This unity feels wrong because it is not how God made things to be. 00:09:20.000 |
Now, in this passage we read from in chapter 2, verse 11 through 18, 00:09:24.000 |
we see that the division, that this division and conflict and fighting that 00:09:28.000 |
we're talking about must not be found in the household of God. 00:09:38.000 |
And it must not be found not just in the church, but in the believer. 00:09:49.000 |
A Christian dealing with disunity should show a depth of theology and 00:09:53.000 |
doctrine that changes the way we live and preaches the gospel by how we 00:09:57.000 |
respond to division and clashing and disunity. 00:10:01.000 |
Christians are stable and rock steady in a world filled with strife. 00:10:06.000 |
And the answer all goes back to our understanding of the Bible, 00:10:13.000 |
And that's what we see in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11 through 22, 00:10:17.000 |
which actually kind of mimics Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1 through 10. 00:10:21.000 |
Now, a lot of us know Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1 through 10, 00:10:24.000 |
and we understand, you know, for by grace we have been saved through faith, 00:10:28.000 |
This passage in verse 11 through 18, it has a little bit of that. 00:10:32.000 |
Like, remember who you once were and remember the grace of God in your life. 00:10:38.000 |
So we're going to be going through just a few main points. 00:10:42.000 |
The first point is that we were far from God. 00:10:48.000 |
If you could look down with me at verse 11, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11, 00:10:51.000 |
it says, "Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, 00:10:56.000 |
called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, 00:10:59.000 |
which is made in the flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time 00:11:03.000 |
separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel 00:11:07.000 |
and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God 00:11:13.000 |
Now, he singles out a group of people here called the Gentiles, 00:11:17.000 |
And because this is in Ephesus, which is a port city, 00:11:20.000 |
there are a lot of different cultures that kind of mingle 00:11:28.000 |
And so you're going to find a lot of Gentiles. 00:11:31.000 |
And with the Greek influence here, there is a God that's being worshipped here 00:11:37.000 |
And in this city, there is a great fascination with magic and the occult. 00:11:45.000 |
This is a city full of as pagan as you could get. 00:11:53.000 |
But because of the diaspora of the Jews, there were both Jews and Gentiles 00:12:01.000 |
But even though both the Jew and the Gentile might be a believer in the church, 00:12:04.000 |
there was perpetual infighting within the church in matters of superiority 00:12:10.000 |
and hierarchy still being a very relevant issue to them. 00:12:16.000 |
These Gentiles, which Paul is directly addressing them, 00:12:22.000 |
He reminds specifically this group, the Gentiles, that you were in the flesh. 00:12:27.000 |
And he says, "Remember," and he doesn't say it just once. 00:12:38.000 |
Don't forget the darkness you lived in and how scary and terrifying of a place that was. 00:12:42.000 |
Don't forget the fact that you were destined for hell. 00:12:45.000 |
Don't forget how you were so hopeless in your life. 00:12:55.000 |
He's saying, "Don't forget that you have a new hope." 00:12:58.000 |
And at this point, all the Jews are kind of nodding their heads 00:13:08.000 |
"Remember all of these different things that you are not." 00:13:13.000 |
We're going to go through those in just a moment. 00:13:15.000 |
"Remember this list of things that shows how far you were from God." 00:13:18.000 |
And here's the Jew believer looking at this and saying, 00:13:27.000 |
It's inherent in these Jews, built into them to feel the division 00:13:31.000 |
between them and their Gentile brothers and sisters. 00:13:34.000 |
And for the Gentiles, this is a stinging reminder that they are not the original, 00:13:41.000 |
So Jews are saying, "Yeah, don't forget that." 00:13:45.000 |
Because in their understanding, though they knew there were sinners, 00:13:50.000 |
just as though they knew that they needed the grace of God, just like the Gentiles, 00:13:55.000 |
they still had built into them, but we're a little bit better than them. 00:14:00.000 |
We're a little bit more blessed than these Gentiles. 00:14:04.000 |
We're a little bit of more worth than these Gentiles. 00:14:17.000 |
We like to look at someone and say, "I'm not as bad as that guy. 00:14:21.000 |
I still have something a little bit better to offer than that person." 00:14:26.000 |
And in this statement, as Paul is addressing the Gentiles, 00:14:36.000 |
And we're not going to do a deep study on this one, 00:14:38.000 |
but there's a reason why this term is being used. 00:14:40.000 |
Gentiles being called to uncircumcision was actually a Jewish ethnic slur 00:14:51.000 |
This is something a Jew would say with a sneer on their face, saying, 00:15:02.000 |
when he wants to insult Goliath to his face, he doesn't go up-- 00:15:06.000 |
this is 700 years back--he doesn't just go up to Goliath and go like, 00:15:14.000 |
He calls him, "You uncircumcised Philistine." 00:15:24.000 |
This is a term that has hundreds of years of conflict 00:15:27.000 |
and divide behind it between Jew and Gentile. 00:15:30.000 |
Circumcision was the precious covenant God gave to Abraham in Genesis 17. 00:15:34.000 |
To stamp his mark on his people Israel, he would stamp them with this. 00:15:38.000 |
This is what separated Israel from every other nation 00:15:44.000 |
And this idea of being part of the circumcision versus the uncircumcision 00:15:48.000 |
was still a disunifying issue in the Ephesian church. 00:15:53.000 |
So as much as you might find disunity in society and in the world, 00:15:57.000 |
the church was not above the temptation of disunity. 00:16:03.000 |
To allow external factors to dictate the movement of the church, 00:16:12.000 |
He says, "The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. 00:16:16.000 |
The Gentiles," said the Jews, "were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell. 00:16:22.000 |
God," they said, "loves only Israel of all the nations that he had made. 00:16:26.000 |
It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in her hour of sorest need, 00:16:31.000 |
for that would simply be to bring another Gentile into the world. 00:16:36.000 |
Until Christ came, the Gentiles were an object of contempt to the Jews. 00:16:42.000 |
It was a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, or if a Jewish girl married a Gentile boy, 00:16:47.000 |
the funeral of that Jewish boy or girl was carried out. 00:16:50.000 |
Such contact with the Gentile was the equivalent of death." 00:16:57.000 |
Christian or not, this is the type of sentiment between the Jew and the Gentile. 00:17:07.000 |
And Paul begins to list out, "Remember who you were." 00:17:10.000 |
And we're going to go through a quick five things, 00:17:12.000 |
if you look down at the passage that we just read in verse 11 and 12. 00:17:17.000 |
And the first is this, "Separated from Christ." 00:17:19.000 |
Separated from Christ isn't just a little separation. 00:17:31.000 |
There was no relational hope of salvation from a Messiah. 00:17:40.000 |
There was a deep void between the Gentile and God. 00:17:46.000 |
The second thing he says is that they were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. 00:18:15.000 |
And there's a big divide here that he's trying to show. 00:18:17.000 |
If you watch the Olympics, the Winter Olympics are coming out, 00:18:20.000 |
and you're not going to see like a German Olympic athlete 00:18:28.000 |
all of a sudden decide they're going to play for like America. 00:18:31.000 |
There's loyalty there, and there's divisions, and it's done in the sense of harmony, 00:18:38.000 |
He's saying you are alienated from the commonwealth, from the citizenship of Israel. 00:18:42.000 |
Thirdly, he says you are strangers to the covenants of promise. 00:18:55.000 |
Covenants were the way that God made the promises to Israel. 00:18:59.000 |
So basically, if he did not make a covenant with Israel, 00:19:02.000 |
there would be none of his promises for Israel. 00:19:06.000 |
He gave covenants to people like Abraham, Jacob, and David, 00:19:09.000 |
and covenants are the way that God made the promises of the future Messiah that's coming to save Israel. 00:19:18.000 |
Paul was saying, "Remember, Gentiles, you were strangers to the covenant of promise. 00:19:21.000 |
You didn't even have the hope of the Messiah." 00:19:26.000 |
Fourthly, he says, "No hope. You had no hope in your life." 00:19:33.000 |
Some of you guys might relate very recently too, 00:19:37.000 |
but for me, I became a believer, I mean it was years ago, but I remember it so vividly, 00:19:45.000 |
As a proclaiming atheist, I remember thinking about my life and thinking, 00:19:52.000 |
"Okay, well, if this is true, if I cease to exist, then what about tomorrow? 00:20:00.000 |
As I would think through this concept of what it would look like, 00:20:05.000 |
the hopelessness and darkness and despair that that brings, 00:20:17.000 |
These Gentiles were most likely pagan before, 00:20:22.000 |
and so they believed one of two things, either that they would cease to exist, 00:20:26.000 |
or that their souls would wander for eternity. 00:20:28.000 |
Can you imagine that, just believing that and trying to go to sleep at night, 00:20:32.000 |
and waking up the next day and trying to live your life? 00:20:35.000 |
There's just no hope. Paul is reminding them, "You had no hope." 00:20:39.000 |
Fifthly, if it's going to get any worse, he says, "You are without God in the world." 00:20:47.000 |
This was a polytheistic culture, and they worshipped thousands, myriads of different gods. 00:20:53.000 |
To say that they would give their lives to God and sacrifice to these gods and all this kind of thing, 00:20:59.000 |
and for Paul to say, "You worship all these things, this is so sad," 00:21:10.000 |
Paul says, "Gentiles, remember that this is who you were. 00:21:16.000 |
You were light years from God, an astronomical divide from God. 00:21:21.000 |
You had no hope. You were not even close to Israel. 00:21:34.000 |
This is who the Gentiles were. These Gentiles should hang their heads in shame." 00:21:40.000 |
And yet Paul is spinning this in a positive light. 00:21:42.000 |
Paul tells them, "Remember that this is who you were." This is past tense. 00:21:47.000 |
So if you look back at Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 3, 00:21:50.000 |
it's a reminder that this is just a reminder of the gospel, right? 00:21:55.000 |
"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, 00:21:58.000 |
following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, 00:22:01.000 |
the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, 00:22:04.000 |
among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, 00:22:07.000 |
carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, 00:22:10.000 |
and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind." 00:22:15.000 |
"But God, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." 00:22:23.000 |
Now what's cool here is that in Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 3, it is given to the church. 00:22:29.000 |
In Ephesians 2, verses 11 through 13, he is specifically addressing Gentiles. 00:22:37.000 |
And in verse 4, this "But God, even when we were dead in our trespasses, 00:22:50.000 |
"And now with the fall there came a division between us and God, and us and one another." 00:22:54.000 |
And before we can address us and one another and the application of this sermon, 00:22:58.000 |
is that we need to address this divide between us and God. 00:23:01.000 |
And he says then, verse 13, that we are now unified with God. 00:23:10.000 |
It says, "But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, 00:23:14.000 |
have been brought near by the blood of Christ." 00:23:22.000 |
"You who are far away have been brought near." 00:23:28.000 |
And those first two words again, "But now" show up, just as in Ephesians 4. 00:23:35.000 |
God inserts himself and injects himself and intercedes. 00:23:43.000 |
"You who once were far off have been brought near by Christ's blood." 00:24:11.000 |
because what was able to bridge that divide was the blood of Christ. 00:24:17.000 |
It drew forward Gentiles who were separated from Christ. 00:24:24.000 |
To these Gentiles who are alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, 00:24:32.000 |
This is radical that God would draw near not just sinners, but these Gentiles. 00:24:38.000 |
These dirty, sinful, pagan people who should have nothing to do with the God of Israel. 00:24:45.000 |
This is scandalous stuff, shocking and horrifying stuff 00:24:48.000 |
that Paul is bringing up here to these people. 00:24:58.000 |
If you could think back with me to the story of the leper, 00:25:03.000 |
I remember these Jews, lepers, just physically lepers were rotting. 00:25:14.000 |
But not only that, in Jewish culture, lepers were seen as so unclean. 00:25:21.000 |
If you even get anywhere near them, if you touch anything they touch, 00:25:24.000 |
you have to actually go outside the walls of the city 00:25:28.000 |
and you have to do all these different things. 00:25:31.000 |
It was from day one when they're born, from that moment on as they're growing up, 00:25:36.000 |
the parents are saying, "When you see a leper, you go." 00:25:39.000 |
And so that's what you grow up with is dirty, unclean people. 00:25:43.000 |
Not only that, the lepers themselves have to walk around yelling. 00:25:48.000 |
You have to walk around saying, "Unclean, unclean," 00:26:02.000 |
And here comes Jesus and draws near to this leper. 00:26:05.000 |
You can hear the audible gasp of all the Jews that are surrounding. 00:26:10.000 |
They're probably watching this in a circle that spans wide 00:26:15.000 |
And here they see Jesus reaching out to touch the leper. 00:26:25.000 |
God, a creator God, drawing near Gentile sinners to himself was far worse. 00:26:40.000 |
Even for us, we don't like going near dirty, unclean things. 00:26:48.000 |
Like if you go to a fast food restaurant, what do you do? 00:26:52.000 |
You look at all the tables, and when you see dirty stuff on there, 00:27:01.000 |
perhaps with a co-worker or something like that, 00:27:03.000 |
and they're coughing into their arm, and it sounds kind of bad, 00:27:14.000 |
And there's something about dirtiness that makes you want to-- 00:27:17.000 |
like if you touch the hand of someone that had a dirty hand, 00:27:21.000 |
There's something about it that actually causes a tangible division. 00:27:31.000 |
As I was doing the sermon, as I was preparing and meditating on this passage, 00:27:36.000 |
I was at a Starbucks, and then at the Starbucks, two homeless men walked in. 00:27:40.000 |
And as these two homeless men walked in, it was like instantaneously 00:27:48.000 |
And this is not to be mocking or anything like that. 00:27:54.000 |
It was just as soon as they walked in, all eyes just turned on them, 00:27:58.000 |
and I just looked around because I was like, "This is interesting," 00:28:01.000 |
because I was studying something like uncleanness and things like that. 00:28:05.000 |
So as I was watching, I was looking at people's faces, 00:28:12.000 |
Everyone could see it, but they didn't think. 00:28:15.000 |
I was just so captivated by these two homeless men that I walked in. 00:28:19.000 |
And their clothes were pretty raggy, and they came and sat kind of off to the side of me. 00:28:26.000 |
And as I was sitting there, I was thinking about it. 00:28:29.000 |
I'm like, "You know, division is like immediate." 00:28:36.000 |
There's just something where as soon as they walked in, 00:28:39.000 |
there was this big divide between the two homeless men and everybody else. 00:28:46.000 |
Three people actually got up and walked to the other side of the Starbucks. 00:28:51.000 |
And for me, I was just observing this whole time. 00:28:53.000 |
I'm like, "Oh, you know, what's interesting is even me, 00:28:58.000 |
I'm looking at them, and I could feel this division, 00:29:09.000 |
That's something about this understanding of uncleanness, 00:29:23.000 |
It's just this understanding of something that's so different. 00:29:32.000 |
We want to move away from people that are unlike us. 00:29:35.000 |
And we want to move away from people who don't agree with us. 00:29:38.000 |
And we want to move away from people who make us feel certain ways. 00:29:45.000 |
He draws the vilest of people to himself before him. 00:29:48.000 |
And he does it in the most heinous way possible, 00:30:00.000 |
infinitely of value and worth, exalted in heaven, 00:30:07.000 |
glorious of immense worth, magnitude and gravity of who he is 00:30:14.000 |
and his holiness and righteousness, filling everything. 00:30:19.000 |
The God who is able to create the world with the power of his word 00:30:24.000 |
would give his own life in obedience to the Father 00:30:26.000 |
and sacrifice himself for the filth of the world 00:30:32.000 |
We don't deserve this, but he extends it to us. 00:30:36.000 |
And so if you look down at verse 14, it says, 00:30:56.000 |
He himself is the solution is what he's saying here. 00:30:59.000 |
It's the same reason why in John 14, verse 6, 00:31:01.000 |
Jesus says, "Not that I will provide a way to the Father." 00:31:08.000 |
In John 10, verse 9, he doesn't say, "I will open the gate for you." 00:31:14.000 |
That this is the only way, that I am the only object 00:31:18.000 |
by which a vile sinner, unclean, can be drawn near to God. 00:31:39.000 |
That means that without Christ, there is no other way to find peace. 00:31:54.000 |
to repair a broken relationship that has caused death to fall upon humanity. 00:31:58.000 |
Now this is where the rubber meets the road as we think of unity with people. 00:32:02.000 |
Ultimately, even though the theological anchor here 00:32:10.000 |
the outpouring is being talked about with one another, with people. 00:32:22.000 |
We are called to pursue reconciliation with one another here at church, 00:32:28.000 |
Every Christian, what's cool about the church, I think, 00:32:30.000 |
is if you kind of imagine, we're all gathered here, 00:32:35.000 |
We go to so many places with influences, with so many people, 00:32:43.000 |
Now some of you might be thinking, "Well, didn't Jesus say he came to bring not peace but division?" 00:32:47.000 |
And that's not the type of thing that we're talking about right now. 00:32:50.000 |
So we can study on that or talk about that another day. 00:32:53.000 |
But the type of peace and harmony is being talked about, 00:33:05.000 |
not because we are nice people or sophisticated in our compassionate philosophy, 00:33:09.000 |
but because God drew us near to him by the blood of his Son, 00:33:14.000 |
And this is the reason why in Matthew chapter 5, it says something about sons of God. 00:33:18.000 |
In Matthew 5 it says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." 00:33:22.000 |
It's kind of like DNA of what a Christian is to look like, 00:33:30.000 |
That people, when they look at us, whether they be a believer or a non-believer, 00:33:33.000 |
they say, "That is a child of God. That is a son. That is a daughter of God," 00:33:40.000 |
So this brings us to our third point, we are unified with others. 00:33:49.000 |
it says this, that he breaks down the dividing wall of hostility. 00:33:53.000 |
He himself is our peace, who has made us both one, 00:33:57.000 |
and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 00:34:00.000 |
by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. 00:34:06.000 |
Now that terminology being used here, dividing wall of hostility, 00:34:11.000 |
probably brought to their mind an immediate picture for the audience here, 00:34:21.000 |
there was a rectangular piece of land that had this high wall. 00:34:27.000 |
So if you wanted to worship Yahweh, you would go through those doors. 00:34:31.000 |
And there is a place called the Court of the Gentiles, 00:34:36.000 |
Inside of there is where people would trade and things like that. 00:34:40.000 |
We know of the story of Jesus who overturned tables. That is where it was. 00:34:43.000 |
And then beyond that, inside of this rectangular plot, 00:34:46.000 |
there was a smaller rectangular, elevated about five feet, 00:34:53.000 |
People would have to go up a staircase to go into this area. 00:34:56.000 |
And written in big, bold letters, I will just summarize it for you, 00:34:59.000 |
is, "If you're a Gentile, don't come in here. You will die." 00:35:07.000 |
When Paul is saying, "For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one, 00:35:12.000 |
and broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility," 00:35:15.000 |
this is probably what was being talked about here, 00:35:19.000 |
by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. 00:35:24.000 |
You should remember, Paul is writing a lot of these letters in jail. 00:35:27.000 |
And one of the reasons why he went to jail in Acts 21 is because 00:35:30.000 |
people accused him of taking a Gentile into the court of the Jews. 00:35:40.000 |
and there was a deep understanding of this divide between Jews and Gentiles, 00:35:48.000 |
And so for the Jews, this was a radical statement. 00:35:50.000 |
Like, "Paul, what are you trying to say here?" 00:35:55.000 |
Paul is trying to emphasize an even greater statement that both Jews and Gentiles 00:35:59.000 |
are allowed into something greater, and this is what we mean. 00:36:02.000 |
Now, if you go a little bit deeper, you have the court of the Gentiles, 00:36:05.000 |
you have the court of the Jews, and then in the middle you have this holy place. 00:36:10.000 |
This place is a rectangular, tiny piece, cut in half, 00:36:14.000 |
and there's a curtain that would separate the holy place, 00:36:22.000 |
And the reason why there used to be a curtain there 00:36:31.000 |
and sometimes they would tie a rope to the priest just in case he died in the presence of God, 00:36:38.000 |
There's this understanding that God could not allow his presence to be with people 00:36:42.000 |
because of this deep divide, this deep void between humanity and God due to sin. 00:36:52.000 |
We hear about this great curtain inside of this place that tears in two, 00:36:57.000 |
and this curtain is no more, that there is no longer any divide between us and God. 00:37:09.000 |
How can our presence mingle and cohabitate with God? 00:37:19.000 |
And in Hebrews chapter 4, when it talks about the fact that we're able to draw into his throne of grace. 00:37:25.000 |
How? What is it being talked about when in Colossians 1, 00:37:29.000 |
it says that the mystery of the gospel is Christ in me? 00:37:34.000 |
This understanding of the fact that we are now called temples of God, 00:37:44.000 |
God has broken down this dividing wall of hostility between us and humanity. 00:37:51.000 |
Why is it that if he draws a Jew and he draws a Gentile, 00:37:55.000 |
that there is a dividing wall of hostility between you? 00:38:04.000 |
So we talked about in the beginning about why there's so much disunity in the world. 00:38:07.000 |
It's because the world and the people in it, due to sin, are separated from God. 00:38:16.000 |
If we want to see peace in this world, there's only one way. 00:38:24.000 |
And so the world pursues peace, but without Christ, there is no peace. 00:38:39.000 |
As a kid, we used to drive to church, and I would pass this church called the Church of the Nazarene. 00:38:47.000 |
I don't know what kind of church it was or anything like that, but always on a sign it said, 00:38:54.000 |
And then it said right below that, "No Jesus," K-N-O-W, "no peace." 00:38:57.000 |
I'd be like, "Ah, I see what you did. That's cool." 00:39:00.000 |
And we passed by that, and then I would think about it later on in life. 00:39:07.000 |
There is no peace in this world apart from Jesus. 00:39:11.000 |
In Isaiah 9, verse 6, following the holidays, we know this verse, 00:39:16.000 |
"For to us a son is born, to us a child is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, 00:39:21.000 |
and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." 00:39:28.000 |
Jesus is peace. Jesus is the way peace was extended to us by God. 00:39:33.000 |
And so Jesus himself is the one that kills hostility between us and God, 00:39:36.000 |
and gives us the ability to kill hostility amongst one another. 00:39:40.000 |
That when we know this great peace and reconciliation and unity that we enjoy with our Creator, 00:39:47.000 |
and when this truth is instilled into our hearts, the power of knowing that kind of peace is tremendous. 00:39:58.000 |
That the very way we live will change, it gives us the ability to be able to forgive and love one another in the way that we're called to. 00:40:07.000 |
This world says about marriages that it's supposed to be a 50/50 relationship. 00:40:15.000 |
If the husband isn't giving enough, then the wife has a means to say, "Hey, you're doing bad." 00:40:25.000 |
"You said you would put your socks away in the laundry hamper, and you didn't." 00:40:31.000 |
So there is reason for conflict. There is self-justification for anger, and bitterness, and resentment. 00:40:39.000 |
You pick it up one day, two days, three days, by the end of the week you're like, "I'm done with this." 00:40:45.000 |
Because we think about, in this world, we think about 50/50. There has to be a give and take. 00:40:50.000 |
But the type of reconciliation, the type of peace that we're called to pursue is that of what God gave to us. 00:40:57.000 |
And that means that it is something where the vilest of people were reached down to. 00:41:03.000 |
That people who are far off were reached 100% unconditionally. 00:41:11.000 |
On the basis of the condition that all of it, all of the sin was paid for by Christ. 00:41:19.000 |
It is the same rallying cry for us as a Christian, claiming that we're believers who have received this kind of peace. 00:41:27.000 |
It doesn't matter if someone loves us back. It doesn't matter what another believer does to you or says about you, 00:41:32.000 |
or how it makes you feel. You are making a commitment to love them 100%. 00:41:37.000 |
With the love of God, you are called to make peace with others because you know the peace of Christ. 00:41:44.000 |
Because you know Christ. You have been given peace, now you go and give peace and you make peace. 00:41:51.000 |
There is nothing that should be able to divide up the body of Christ. 00:41:54.000 |
There is only supreme love that pursues reconciliation and peace. 00:42:03.000 |
Now this unifying of believers isn't just people coexisting. 00:42:07.000 |
Because I think that's what we think peace is a lot of times. 00:42:10.000 |
I think it's just coexisting with one another. And it's not. It's much deeper than that. 00:42:15.000 |
If you look down at verse 15 again, you're going to see that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two. 00:42:24.000 |
So making peace and might reconcile us both to God and one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 00:42:33.000 |
It says that he is creating one man where there used to be two. 00:42:36.000 |
And that should kind of draw to your mind something. You should be thinking about husband and wife. 00:42:47.000 |
This is a deep unity. And this is what Christ's peace does. 00:42:52.000 |
It's not coexisting. It's not just going through the motions. 00:42:58.000 |
There is a deep, deep unity that is found in the people of God. 00:43:07.000 |
Our pursuit of peace needs to mimic that of what has happened between us and God. 00:43:15.000 |
We can go around and pursue cheap substitutes of the true peace of Christ. 00:43:18.000 |
We can pretend like nothing's wrong. We're good at that, aren't we? 00:43:24.000 |
Not a big deal. And we try to trick ourselves into thinking that. Not a big deal. 00:43:29.000 |
We can be passive aggressive. We're really good at that one. 00:43:33.000 |
It's passive aggressive and pursuing justice. 00:43:35.000 |
We come up with the weirdest ways to make ourselves feel better. 00:43:40.000 |
We can smile at someone in front of them. We can smile in our hearts. 00:43:50.000 |
We can avoid people or situations. We can duck them. 00:43:57.000 |
That doesn't show our understanding of and apprehension of the gospel. 00:44:04.000 |
Would you look down with me on verse 17 and 18? 00:44:08.000 |
Paul says, "And He came and preached peace to you who are far off, and peace to those who are near. 00:44:13.000 |
For through Him we both have access in one spirit to the Father." 00:44:18.000 |
This distinction between the Jew and Gentile, again he's talking about it being torn down, 00:44:24.000 |
That Jesus preached the same gospel of peace to those who are far off, the Gentiles, 00:44:29.000 |
And again you can hear the audible gasp of the Jews. 00:44:33.000 |
They're allowed into the presence of the Father too? 00:44:38.000 |
This is revolutionary and powerful that the Gentile would be brought from so far 00:44:42.000 |
all the way into direct access to the Father. 00:44:47.000 |
And we see someone doing the action of this pulling of humanity to God. 00:45:13.000 |
If God did all the work and we reap all the benefits and we turn to our neighbor 00:45:17.000 |
and we look at them and say, "Well, you need to do this in order for you to receive my peace." 00:45:22.000 |
There's something very, very twisted and disturbing about that kind of picture. 00:45:29.000 |
We know about the parable of the unforgiving servant who is forgiven of much 00:45:35.000 |
and he turns around and he can't forgive his brother. 00:45:42.000 |
And yet this is much of how we live when we look at certain people. 00:45:54.000 |
And so back to verse 11, we are called to remember this. 00:45:59.000 |
A Christian who forgets will wallow in disunity and demand justice for himself. 00:46:03.000 |
A Christian who remembers will pursue unity and reconciliation and love and harmony. 00:46:13.000 |
"That guy cut me off. I've got to box him in or something." 00:46:17.000 |
There's something about us, wired in us, that we demand stuff. 00:46:25.000 |
God has done it to those who are close and far. 00:46:27.000 |
He doesn't pick favorites. He preaches peace for all people. 00:46:30.000 |
And so we are called to go and preach peace to all people. 00:46:42.000 |
Now we're going back to again what we've received from God. 00:46:44.000 |
In verse 19, he says, "You are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens, saints, 00:47:01.000 |
In Ephesians chapter 1, we see a lot of things. 00:47:04.000 |
In chapter 1, verse 3, it tells us of our blessings. 00:47:07.000 |
That we have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing. 00:47:16.000 |
In verse 7, He redeemed and forgave you, and lavishly so. 00:47:20.000 |
In verse 10, there is a plan for uniting between heaven and earth. 00:47:29.000 |
And so here's the application, because even though this is my first week here, 00:47:33.000 |
I've been hearing from Pastor Peter and Pastor Mark some of the things going on. 00:47:36.000 |
And one of the things that they told me is that for this year, 00:47:39.000 |
we really want to concentrate on applying the truth that we know. 00:47:43.000 |
Now this is where, again, the rubber meets the road, and it becomes very hard. 00:47:51.000 |
This is a tough one today, because we are called to go out and pursue peace and reconciliation with others. 00:48:00.000 |
We are called to seek people out the very way we were sought out by God. 00:48:04.000 |
If how God has sought us out and saved us brings you any joy, 00:48:10.000 |
then that kind of joy needs to propel us into a life of extending that kind of peace with others. 00:48:18.000 |
All of these great gospel truths that make you weep. 00:48:21.000 |
It's like, "Wow! You saved us when I was here. 00:48:26.000 |
You saved me even though I didn't deserve it. 00:48:29.000 |
You gave me grace, and you lavished it upon me. 00:48:34.000 |
And then in verse 11, less of us know of this passage, Anon, 00:48:38.000 |
but it's the direct application of what it's called to look like, a uniting of people. 00:48:49.000 |
It's hard, because we don't want to pursue reconciliation. 00:48:52.000 |
I'm pretty sure right now you can think of one or two, maybe three people in your life 00:49:01.000 |
Someone that God actually kind of places on your heart, and you feel a little guilty about it. 00:49:19.000 |
And when we think that way, we shortchange the power of the Spirit 00:49:21.000 |
and the power of the Word of God, that God will melt hearts and break hearts. 00:49:27.000 |
It's too much effort to reconcile with someone, to pursue peace. 00:49:32.000 |
I have so much going on in my life right now. 00:49:40.000 |
It takes too much prayer to constantly pray about this, and it boils me inside. 00:49:46.000 |
But that kind of lazy living is supremely unloving of others and supremely loving of self, 00:49:51.000 |
especially if God has placed them on your heart. 00:49:55.000 |
You just don't like to feel the ache of conflict. 00:49:59.000 |
That's why we like to avoid conflict and duck people. 00:50:03.000 |
There's this person at my former church that we ended up reconciling, 00:50:09.000 |
but there was a time when I just didn't want to see him. 00:50:12.000 |
I was like, "We're going to argue about this. He's going to say this." 00:50:19.000 |
I did that for a couple of weeks until I knew I shouldn't. 00:50:24.000 |
But we like to do that. It's just uncomfortable. 00:50:28.000 |
Like the one before, it's very selfish, loving of self and unloving of others to do this. 00:50:44.000 |
We put in something, and something comes out. We want that. 00:50:47.000 |
And so since we don't see immediate results, we don't think that it's worth it. 00:50:55.000 |
And fifthly, I think this is the main culprit for us all. 00:50:59.000 |
We are proud people. We don't want to admit our own mistakes 00:51:03.000 |
and do the deep work of unraveling it and confessing it to someone. 00:51:10.000 |
Or maybe you don't want to hear the other party kind of like, 00:51:29.000 |
We will say, "Sorry," only if we get that back. 00:51:36.000 |
When there is no peace with someone, it really ends up doing something to our souls. 00:51:42.000 |
It dilutes the gospel truth in our own life of the peace that God has given to us, 00:51:47.000 |
the forgiveness and love that God has extended to us. 00:51:50.000 |
God went to the bitter end in his pursuit of peace with us. 00:51:56.000 |
Who are we to say that we won't go the distance to pursue peace with others? 00:52:04.000 |
That we sing these songs on Sundays, and we go to Bible studies, 00:52:08.000 |
and we read our scripture passages every morning, and we pray all the time, 00:52:14.000 |
and yet there is this dark side of our soul that just wants to keep this part hidden, 00:52:26.000 |
We say, "You're not worth pursuing peace with for whatever reason." 00:52:29.000 |
And when we say that, we're showing a lack of understanding of our great sin before God 00:52:51.000 |
You obviously can't do this with every person in your life, 00:52:58.000 |
Don't throw everyone out with a baby with bathwater, okay? 00:53:01.000 |
Don't be like, "Well, I can't pursue peace with everyone, 00:53:10.000 |
God places people in our hearts, and in those steps of faith, 00:53:12.000 |
when we pursue peace with them, God sanctifies us 00:53:15.000 |
and develops in us a heart and lifestyle of a peacemaker. 00:53:20.000 |
Even if that person doesn't want anything to do with you, 00:53:23.000 |
doesn't even want your forgiveness or to forgive you, 00:53:28.000 |
and actually that deepens your understanding of the gospel 00:53:37.000 |
but I wanted to give just a practical resource. 00:53:41.000 |
It's called "The Peacemaker," written by Ken Sandy. 00:53:45.000 |
if you want to pursue reconciliation with someone. 00:53:52.000 |
Other than all the reconciliation you must pursue with people in your life, 00:53:56.000 |
I would like for Berean to be a church and a place 00:54:03.000 |
I'm a newcomer coming in, and I don't know anything 00:54:07.000 |
So don't think I'm singling anything out right now. I'm not. 00:54:11.000 |
I'm just talking about what the Bible says here 00:54:16.000 |
We must pursue unity, and if there's any bitterness 00:54:23.000 |
that is at the core of your heart when you're thinking of somebody 00:54:26.000 |
or something or a policy or whatever it might be, 00:54:29.000 |
all of these different things, whether you're right or wrong, 00:54:32.000 |
whether they're right or wrong, it doesn't matter. 00:54:39.000 |
We are called to do it, to pursue reconciliation 00:54:52.000 |
and never let the enemy have a foothold here in this church. 00:55:01.000 |
you know that the roots have already been growing for a long time. 00:55:09.000 |
that means there's a lot going down underneath. 00:55:18.000 |
when we go into the hard conversations of confronting one another 00:55:24.000 |
this is when the church actually really begins 00:55:26.000 |
to deepen in the understanding of the gospel. 00:55:32.000 |
and we hold hands and we just continue along. 00:55:34.000 |
We just come to services and Bible studies and things like that. 00:55:42.000 |
and that this church, Beruian, can be a church 00:55:44.000 |
that's filled with the testimony of the gospel of God's peace given to us. 00:56:07.000 |
You have atoned for our sins through the very blood of Jesus. 00:56:19.000 |
and a church that will pursue peace with one another 00:56:22.000 |
and then go out into the world and pursue peace with others. 00:56:29.000 |
I pray, God, that we would actually begin to pursue people