>> Yes, I am eager, but I cannot. But we are so grateful. Even my wife and I, we feel the warmth of Korean, and already, maybe it's supernatural. I feel a love deepening. And it was just last week when we left our old church, Good Stewards Church, and I was there for 20 years.

So it was a long time. There was a lot of tears. And this morning, you know, as I was singing alongside you guys, and, you know, even thinking and praying through this morning, we are so, so grateful that Berean is our new church family. And we want to really be that.

We want to be running this race with you. We want to live life with you. We would want to challenge you as much as you challenge us. And, yeah, and I'm very, very grateful to Pastor Mark and Pastor Peter who have done nothing but encourage us. Because, honestly, I'm very nervous.

I'm really nervous to be up here. I am super introverted. But we're so grateful to the pastoral staff here. You guys have an amazing -- well, we. We have an amazing pastoral staff here at Berean. So let's go directly into the Word. And hopefully, please, I hope to get to know you guys more as the years go.

So if you could turn with me to Ephesians 2, verse 11. And we're going to be reading through verse 18. But we'll touch on verse 19 through 22 as well towards the end. Ephesians 2, 11. Can we pray together? God, thank you. Thank you for Berean. Thank you for all of these hearts that are here.

God, even to entrust someone they don't know that well to come up on a pulpit and unravel the Word of God. And, God, I'm humbled. And so, God, I pray that it really would not be man, but it would be you, our God, speaking through your Word, convicting through your Spirit.

And so, Father, it would not be just gauging a stranger up on a pulpit, but, Father, truly engaging your Word and your Scripture as precious to us, that it might affect and transform the way we live, the way we think, even how we breathe and our hearts beat. Father, all of that would fall in line with who you are and how much we love you because of what you've done for us.

Help me now as I preach this Word to be clear. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We're going to be talking a little bit about disunity today. And we can see disunity everywhere. Politics. You know, I try to keep up with the news a little bit, and politics, oh, man, it does nothing but bring disunity, doesn't it?

Even when we were looking at the presidential election in the fall, we saw how it fractured, not just the disunity between someone like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but a fracturing of America happened, and we saw that, and it continues. We saw a great divide within an entire nation and with people.

This is disunity, and we know that there's disunity everywhere. You see it amongst nations. Even today there's technically still a war going on in North Korea and South Korea. Since 1953 when the war ended, only seven times have there been an opportunity for family members from North and South to be able to see each other, and you can see the tangible effects of disunity and what might happen.

And there are other wars going on today. There's the war in Afghanistan. There's a civil war in Iraq. There's the Boko Haram insurgency, a Syrian civil war. There's the Kurdish-Turkish conflict. There's the Libyan crisis, and there's a lot of stuff going on, and we can see that there is disunity, conflict everywhere.

You see it amongst people and governments. You see it on college campuses. Recently there was the whole Black Lives Matter movement that brought about division, institutionalized law enforcement and a black community, a conflict that has drawn in all races. There's disunity everywhere. We hear of mass shootings, stabbings, explosions, even right here in America.

There's disunity in our schools. We see fights break out. We see people clawing through each other to get to the top. We see people gossiping and slandering and hating and killing in that way. We see it in our workplaces, between employer and employee, between employees and employees. We see disunity everywhere, even in our families.

Doors slammed and faces yelling and crying, misunderstandings, silent treatments, divorces, tense holiday gatherings. This is actually why this has been on my mind, because the holidays just passed, but there's nothing like a holiday to show the disunity between a family, right? People playing favorites, saying mean things to one another, things that are hurtful.

A disunity that might also fly under the radar. They're not always apparent, but it's always present. You go into any room with any group of people, and you're going to see immediate disunity, division, scoping eyes, observation, constantly looking and bringing about division. And so it is that you'll also find disunity within the church.

Now, there's something about disunity that feels wrong, and there's something about unity that just feels right. So where did all this disunity come from? Why do we partake in this kind of thing? Well, it came from the very beginning when sin entered into the world, when Adam and Eve made the decision to eat of the fruit of the knowledge -- tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And immediately, as soon as they did that, there came a division between God and humanity. And because of that, there became a division between man and woman, or Adam and Eve. And that division, it wasn't just a slow, you know, gradual division type of thing. It ramped up really fast, to the point where by the first set of kids, they're killing each other in Cain and Abel.

This conflict, then, isn't rooted in disagreement. This unity isn't rooted in differing ideas. This unity is actually rooted in this idea of sin. The problem always has been and always will be sin. That is what's going to bring about conflict. Two people, two sides proclaiming that they are right in a given situation, essentially proclaiming that my glory is of the utmost importance in this situation when I'm arguing with you, fighting, clawing, killing to get it, building, towering relational walls between one another.

Now, unity is what we're meant for. It feels right. This unity feels wrong because it is not how God made things to be. Now, in this passage we read from in chapter 2, verse 11 through 18, we see that the division, that this division and conflict and fighting that we're talking about must not be found in the household of God.

It must not be found in the church. And it must not be found not just in the church, but in the believer. Christians are to look radically different. A Christian dealing with disunity should show a depth of theology and doctrine that changes the way we live and preaches the gospel by how we respond to division and clashing and disunity.

Christians are stable and rock steady in a world filled with strife. And the answer all goes back to our understanding of the Bible, our understanding of the gospel. And that's what we see in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11 through 22, which actually kind of mimics Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1 through 10.

Now, a lot of us know Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1 through 10, and we understand, you know, for by grace we have been saved through faith, where we're coming from. This passage in verse 11 through 18, it has a little bit of that. Like, remember who you once were and remember the grace of God in your life.

So we're going to be going through just a few main points. The first is this. The first point is that we were far from God. If you could look down with me at verse 11, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11, it says, "Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." Now, he singles out a group of people here called the Gentiles, and this is Paul writing this letter.

And because this is in Ephesus, which is a port city, there are a lot of different cultures that kind of mingle and migrate into this area. And so you're going to find a lot of Gentiles. And with the Greek influence here, there is a God that's being worshipped here called Artemis.

And in this city, there is a great fascination with magic and the occult. This was a city that is far from God. This is a city full of as pagan as you could get. But because of the diaspora of the Jews, there were both Jews and Gentiles in the church.

But even though both the Jew and the Gentile might be a believer in the church, there was perpetual infighting within the church in matters of superiority and hierarchy still being a very relevant issue to them. These Gentiles, which Paul is directly addressing them, he reminds them of something. He reminds specifically this group, the Gentiles, that you were in the flesh.

And he says, "Remember," and he doesn't say it just once. He says it twice. "Don't forget. Don't forget where you used to be. Don't forget who you used to be. Don't forget the darkness you lived in and how scary and terrifying of a place that was. Don't forget the fact that you were destined for hell.

Don't forget how you were so hopeless in your life. Don't forget where you came from." He's saying, "Don't forget that you have a new hope." And at this point, all the Jews are kind of nodding their heads because Paul is addressing who? The Gentiles. Paul is addressing the Gentiles and saying, "Remember all of these different things that you are not." We're going to go through those in just a moment.

"Remember this list of things that shows how far you were from God." And here's the Jew believer looking at this and saying, "Yeah, you remember, Gentiles." It's inherent in these Jews, built into them to feel the division between them and their Gentile brothers and sisters. And for the Gentiles, this is a stinging reminder that they are not the original, historical people of God.

So Jews are saying, "Yeah, don't forget that." Because in their understanding, though they knew there were sinners, these Jewish believers, just as though they knew that they needed the grace of God, just like the Gentiles, they still had built into them, but we're a little bit better than them.

We're a little bit more blessed than these Gentiles. We're a little bit of more worth than these Gentiles. We were closer to God than these guys. And that's human. We like to look at someone and say, "I'm not as bad as that guy. I still have something a little bit better to offer than that person." And in this statement, as Paul is addressing the Gentiles, he calls out this term.

This term is "uncircumcision." And we're not going to do a deep study on this one, but there's a reason why this term is being used. Gentiles being called to uncircumcision was actually a Jewish ethnic slur given to the Gentile. This is something a Jew would say with a sneer on their face, saying, "Ah, you uncircumcised people." If you know the story of David and Goliath, when he wants to insult Goliath to his face, he doesn't go up-- this is 700 years back--he doesn't just go up to Goliath and go like, "You Philistine dog," or anything like that.

You know what he calls him? He calls him, "You uncircumcised Philistine." This was an insult. This is a term that has hundreds of years of conflict and divide behind it between Jew and Gentile. Circumcision was the precious covenant God gave to Abraham in Genesis 17. To stamp his mark on his people Israel, he would stamp them with this.

This is what separated Israel from every other nation and what made them so specially blessed. And this idea of being part of the circumcision versus the uncircumcision was still a disunifying issue in the Ephesian church. So as much as you might find disunity in society and in the world, the church was not above the temptation of disunity.

To allow external factors to dictate the movement of the church, here's how a Jew might view the Gentile. This is from William Barclay. He says, "The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. The Gentiles," said the Jews, "were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell.

God," they said, "loves only Israel of all the nations that he had made. It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in her hour of sorest need, for that would simply be to bring another Gentile into the world. Until Christ came, the Gentiles were an object of contempt to the Jews.

The barrier between them was absolute. It was a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, or if a Jewish girl married a Gentile boy, the funeral of that Jewish boy or girl was carried out. Such contact with the Gentile was the equivalent of death." Christian or not, this is the type of sentiment between the Jew and the Gentile.

And they carried this into the church. And Paul begins to list out, "Remember who you were." And we're going to go through a quick five things, if you look down at the passage that we just read in verse 11 and 12. And the first is this, "Separated from Christ." Separated from Christ isn't just a little separation.

This word just means completely apart. You were completely apart from Christ. There was no relational hope of salvation from a Messiah. There was a deep void between the Gentile and God. The second thing he says is that they were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. And that's exactly what it sounds like.

You were aliens. You were different. Completely different. Commonwealth literally means citizenship. You were of a different nation. You were not of us. You were of something else. You were not of the kingdom of God. You were of the kingdom of the world. And there's a big divide here that he's trying to show.

If you watch the Olympics, the Winter Olympics are coming out, and you're not going to see like a German Olympic athlete all of a sudden decide they're going to play for like America. There's loyalty there, and there's divisions, and it's done in the sense of harmony, but there are divisions, different nations.

He's saying you are alienated from the commonwealth, from the citizenship of Israel. Thirdly, he says you are strangers to the covenants of promise. Foreign. You are not having the promises of Israel. Covenants were the way that God made the promises to Israel. So basically, if he did not make a covenant with Israel, there would be none of his promises for Israel.

He gave covenants to people like Abraham, Jacob, and David, and covenants are the way that God made the promises of the future Messiah that's coming to save Israel. Paul was saying, "Remember, Gentiles, you were strangers to the covenant of promise. You didn't even have the hope of the Messiah." Fourthly, he says, "No hope.

You had no hope in your life." Some of you guys might relate very recently too, but for me, I became a believer, I mean it was years ago, but I remember it so vividly, what it was like to live without hope. As a proclaiming atheist, I remember thinking about my life and thinking, "Okay, well, if this is true, if I cease to exist, then what about tomorrow?

How am I supposed to live?" As I would think through this concept of what it would look like, the hopelessness and darkness and despair that that brings, that was for the Gentile. They had no hope. These Gentiles were most likely pagan before, and so they believed one of two things, either that they would cease to exist, or that their souls would wander for eternity.

Can you imagine that, just believing that and trying to go to sleep at night, and waking up the next day and trying to live your life? There's just no hope. Paul is reminding them, "You had no hope." Fifthly, if it's going to get any worse, he says, "You are without God in the world." Now, this is heavier than it seems.

This was a polytheistic culture, and they worshipped thousands, myriads of different gods. To say that they would give their lives to God and sacrifice to these gods and all this kind of thing, and for Paul to say, "You worship all these things, this is so sad," and yet you are without God in the world.

It's a sad picture. Paul says, "Gentiles, remember that this is who you were. You were far from God. You were light years from God, an astronomical divide from God. You had no hope. You were not even close to Israel. There was nothing for you. This is who the Gentiles were.

These Gentiles should hang their heads in shame." And yet Paul is spinning this in a positive light. Paul tells them, "Remember that this is who you were." This is past tense. So if you look back at Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 3, it's a reminder that this is just a reminder of the gospel, right?

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind." And here it is.

"But God, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." Now what's cool here is that in Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 3, it is given to the church. In Ephesians 2, verses 11 through 13, he is specifically addressing Gentiles. And in verse 4, this "But God, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ." And then he's focusing in on these Gentiles.

"And now with the fall there came a division between us and God, and us and one another." And before we can address us and one another and the application of this sermon, is that we need to address this divide between us and God. And he says then, verse 13, that we are now unified with God.

And this is our second point today. We are unified with God. Look down with me at Ephesians 2, verse 13. It says, "But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ." Still talking to the Gentiles. "You who are far away have been brought near." And those first two words again, "But now" show up, just as in Ephesians 4.

God inserts himself and injects himself and intercedes. And through Christ, through Jesus, "You who once were far off have been brought near by Christ's blood." This is his blood. This is what his death did. His death did something miraculous. His death, it wasn't just God saying, "Come. Here's peace.

Just walk over to me. I forgive. I give you kindness and compassion. Just come." And we come groveling over. No, no. This is something amazing and miraculous because what was able to bridge that divide was the blood of Christ. It drew forward Gentiles who were separated from Christ. It brought hope to the hopeless people.

To these Gentiles who are alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenant of hope, people without hope and without God. This is radical that God would draw near not just sinners, but these Gentiles. These dirty, sinful, pagan people who should have nothing to do with the God of Israel.

This is scandalous stuff, shocking and horrifying stuff that Paul is bringing up here to these people. That God would draw near Gentile sinners. If you could think back with me to the story of the leper, where Jesus approaches the leper. I remember these Jews, lepers, just physically lepers were rotting.

They were just walking dead. But not only that, in Jewish culture, lepers were seen as so unclean. If you even get anywhere near them, if you touch anything they touch, you have to actually go outside the walls of the city and you have to do all these different things.

You have to be moved away. It was from day one when they're born, from that moment on as they're growing up, the parents are saying, "When you see a leper, you go." And so that's what you grow up with is dirty, unclean people. Not only that, the lepers themselves have to walk around yelling.

This is the saddest thing, right? You have to walk around saying, "Unclean, unclean," showing everybody that they're unclean. This is inherent in them. Day one, it was just built into them. How dirty a leper is. And here comes Jesus and draws near to this leper. You can hear the audible gasp of all the Jews that are surrounding.

They're probably watching this in a circle that spans wide because they don't want to get too close. And here they see Jesus reaching out to touch the leper. And as striking as that picture is, God, a creator God, drawing near Gentile sinners to himself was far worse. Even for us, we don't like going near dirty, unclean things.

Like if you go to a fast food restaurant, what do you do? You look at all the tables, and when you see dirty stuff on there, you pass on to the next table. You don't want to have that. When you're walking into a room, perhaps with a co-worker or something like that, and they're coughing into their arm, and it sounds kind of bad, what do you do?

You don't want to be there. You don't walk away. They're unclean, right? It's dirty. And there's something about dirtiness that makes you want to-- like if you touch the hand of someone that had a dirty hand, you want to wash it. There's something about it that actually causes a tangible division.

It was interesting. As I was doing the sermon, as I was preparing and meditating on this passage, I was at a Starbucks, and then at the Starbucks, two homeless men walked in. And as these two homeless men walked in, it was like instantaneously that Starbucks was filled with a stench.

And this is not to be mocking or anything like that. It was just as soon as they walked in, all eyes just turned on them, and I just looked around because I was like, "This is interesting," because I was studying something like uncleanness and things like that. So as I was watching, I was looking at people's faces, and they would grimace.

They'd go like this. Just all around. Everyone could see it, but they didn't think. I was just so captivated by these two homeless men that I walked in. And their clothes were pretty raggy, and they came and sat kind of off to the side of me. And as I was sitting there, I was thinking about it.

I'm like, "You know, division is like immediate." It's nothing they did. There's just something where as soon as they walked in, there was this big divide between the two homeless men and everybody else. Three people actually got up and walked to the other side of the Starbucks. And for me, I was just observing this whole time.

I'm like, "Oh, you know, what's interesting is even me, I'm looking at them, and I could feel this division, even a type of tension in the room." That's something about this understanding of uncleanness, where it creates judgment between people, judgment between me and another person. And it's not just uncleanness.

It's just this understanding of something that's so different. We're like that as humans, fallen in sin. We want to move away from people that are unlike us. And we want to move away from people who don't agree with us. And we want to move away from people who make us feel certain ways.

But here is God. He draws the vilest of people to himself before him. And he does it in the most heinous way possible, through the blood of his son. What this means is that the creator himself, infinitely of value and worth, exalted in heaven, glorious of immense worth, magnitude and gravity of who he is and his holiness and righteousness, filling everything.

The God who is able to create the world with the power of his word would give his own life in obedience to the Father and sacrifice himself for the filth of the world and draw near people in that manner. We don't deserve this, but he extends it to us.

And so if you look down at verse 14, it says, "For he himself is our peace." It's talking about Jesus. He doesn't just give us peace. He doesn't just give us unity. He doesn't just hand us medicine. He doesn't just hand us a solution. He himself is the medicine.

He himself is the solution is what he's saying here. It's the same reason why in John 14, verse 6, Jesus says, "Not that I will provide a way to the Father." He says, "I am the way." In John 10, verse 9, he doesn't say, "I will open the gate for you." He says, "I am the gate." That this is the only way, that I am the only object by which a vile sinner, unclean, can be drawn near to God.

He is saying he himself is the answer, the only way to unity with the Father. There is no other way. Christ alone, he himself is our peace. That means that without Christ, there is no other way to find peace. Peace is found in Christ alone. We can find cheap substitutes for peace, but there is no peace apart from him.

God needs to extend his hand down to repair a broken relationship that has caused death to fall upon humanity. Now this is where the rubber meets the road as we think of unity with people. Ultimately, even though the theological anchor here is the unity between us and God, the outpouring is being talked about with one another, with people.

We as Christians, and we as a church, are called to live in unity and harmony. We are called to pursue reconciliation with one another here at church, but also wherever we go. Every Christian, what's cool about the church, I think, is if you kind of imagine, we're all gathered here, but we scatter during the week.

We go to so many places with influences, with so many people, and we are called to pursue peace. Now some of you might be thinking, "Well, didn't Jesus say he came to bring not peace but division?" And that's not the type of thing that we're talking about right now.

So we can study on that or talk about that another day. But the type of peace and harmony is being talked about, about the extension of the gospel here. We are to be different as Christians, not because we are nice people or sophisticated in our compassionate philosophy, but because God drew us near to him by the blood of his Son, because Jesus is our peace.

And this is the reason why in Matthew chapter 5, it says something about sons of God. In Matthew 5 it says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." It's kind of like DNA of what a Christian is to look like, that we are called to be peacemakers.

That people, when they look at us, whether they be a believer or a non-believer, they say, "That is a child of God. That is a son. That is a daughter of God," because they are pursuers of peace. So this brings us to our third point, we are unified with others.

If you look down with me at verse 14 and 15, it says this, that he breaks down the dividing wall of hostility. He himself is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.

Now that terminology being used here, dividing wall of hostility, probably brought to their mind an immediate picture for the audience here, and it brought a picture of the temple. If you can kind of imagine a temple with me, there was a rectangular piece of land that had this high wall.

So if you wanted to worship Yahweh, you would go through those doors. And there is a place called the Court of the Gentiles, where even Gentiles could come in. Inside of there is where people would trade and things like that. We know of the story of Jesus who overturned tables.

That is where it was. And then beyond that, inside of this rectangular plot, there was a smaller rectangular, elevated about five feet, with a five-feet wall elevated up. People would have to go up a staircase to go into this area. And written in big, bold letters, I will just summarize it for you, is, "If you're a Gentile, don't come in here.

You will die." And they had this thought. When Paul is saying, "For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one, and broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility," this is probably what was being talked about here, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.

You should remember, Paul is writing a lot of these letters in jail. And one of the reasons why he went to jail in Acts 21 is because people accused him of taking a Gentile into the court of the Jews. And so Paul was familiar with this, and there was a deep understanding of this divide between Jews and Gentiles, even during this time.

And so for the Jews, this was a radical statement. Like, "Paul, what are you trying to say here?" Paul is trying to emphasize an even greater statement that both Jews and Gentiles are allowed into something greater, and this is what we mean. Now, if you go a little bit deeper, you have the court of the Gentiles, you have the court of the Jews, and then in the middle you have this holy place.

This place is a rectangular, tiny piece, cut in half, and there's a curtain that would separate the holy place, the most holy place, the holy of holies. And the reason why there used to be a curtain there is because it divided humanity from God. And so they would send priests in there, and sometimes they would tie a rope to the priest just in case he died in the presence of God, and they would have to drag his body out.

There's this understanding that God could not allow his presence to be with people because of this deep divide, this deep void between humanity and God due to sin. But what happened when Jesus dies? We hear about this great curtain inside of this place that tears in two, and this curtain is no more, that there is no longer any divide between us and God.

This is a mind-blowing statement. What does that mean? How can our presence mingle and cohabitate with God? How can God allow people into his presence? And in Hebrews chapter 4, when it talks about the fact that we're able to draw into his throne of grace. How? What is it being talked about when in Colossians 1, it says that the mystery of the gospel is Christ in me?

What is that? This understanding of the fact that we are now called temples of God, that the Spirit is sealed into us. God has broken down this dividing wall of hostility between us and humanity. He is drawing both Jew and Gentile. Why is it that if he draws a Jew and he draws a Gentile, that there is a dividing wall of hostility between you?

So we talked about in the beginning about why there's so much disunity in the world. It's because the world and the people in it, due to sin, are separated from God. Because here's the thing. If we want to see peace in this world, there's only one way. And that's through Jesus.

There is no other way. And so the world pursues peace, but without Christ, there is no peace. And so then how is peace to go to the world? Through his people. Through people who have received peace. As a kid, we used to drive to church, and I would pass this church called the Church of the Nazarene.

I don't know what kind of church it was or anything like that, but always on a sign it said, "No Jesus, no peace." The N-O. And then it said right below that, "No Jesus," K-N-O-W, "no peace." I'd be like, "Ah, I see what you did. That's cool." And we passed by that, and then I would think about it later on in life.

I'm like, "Man, that was really profound." There is no peace in this world apart from Jesus. In Isaiah 9, verse 6, following the holidays, we know this verse, "For to us a son is born, to us a child is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Jesus is peace.

Jesus is the way peace was extended to us by God. And so Jesus himself is the one that kills hostility between us and God, and gives us the ability to kill hostility amongst one another. That when we know this great peace and reconciliation and unity that we enjoy with our Creator, and when this truth is instilled into our hearts, the power of knowing that kind of peace is tremendous.

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. This world says about marriages that it's supposed to be a 50/50 relationship. One side, husband gets 50%, wife gets 50%. If the husband isn't giving enough, then the wife has a means to say, "Hey, you're doing bad." And vice versa, so it becomes a tug of war.

"You said you would put your socks away in the laundry hamper, and you didn't." So there is reason for conflict. There is self-justification for anger, and bitterness, and resentment. You pick it up one day, two days, three days, by the end of the week you're like, "I'm done with this." Because we think about, in this world, we think about 50/50.

There has to be a give and take. But the type of reconciliation, the type of peace that we're called to pursue is that of what God gave to us. And that means that it is something where the vilest of people were reached down to. That people who are far off were reached 100% unconditionally.

On the basis of the condition that all of it, all of the sin was paid for by Christ. It is the same rallying cry for us as a Christian, claiming that we're believers who have received this kind of peace. It doesn't matter if someone loves us back. It doesn't matter what another believer does to you or says about you, or how it makes you feel.

You are making a commitment to love them 100%. With the love of God, you are called to make peace with others because you know the peace of Christ. Because you know Christ. You have been given peace, now you go and give peace and you make peace. There is nothing that should be able to divide up the body of Christ.

There is only supreme love that pursues reconciliation and peace. Now this unifying of believers isn't just people coexisting. Because I think that's what we think peace is a lot of times. I think it's just coexisting with one another. And it's not. It's much deeper than that. 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.

So making peace and might reconcile us both to God and one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. See there's a couple things going on here. It says that he is creating one man where there used to be two. And that should kind of draw to your mind something.

You should be thinking about husband and wife. This is intimate language being used here. Where there was once two, there is now one. This is a deep unity. And this is what Christ's peace does. It's not coexisting. It's not just going through the motions. There is a deep, deep unity that is found in the people of God.

Our pursuit of peace needs to mimic that of what has happened between us and God. We can go around and pursue cheap substitutes of the true peace of Christ. We can pretend like nothing's wrong. We're good at that, aren't we? Not a big deal. And we try to trick ourselves into thinking that.

Not a big deal. We can be passive aggressive. We're really good at that one. It's passive aggressive and pursuing justice. We come up with the weirdest ways to make ourselves feel better. We can smile at someone in front of them. We can smile in our hearts. We're saying, "I despise you." We can avoid people or situations.

We can duck them. But this is not real peace. That doesn't show our understanding of and apprehension of the gospel. Peace goes deep and is transformative. Would you look down with me on verse 17 and 18? Paul says, "And He came and preached peace to you who are far off, and peace to those who are near.

For through Him we both have access in one spirit to the Father." This distinction between the Jew and Gentile, again he's talking about it being torn down, that both would be brought near. That Jesus preached the same gospel of peace to those who are far off, the Gentiles, and those who are near, the Jews.

And again you can hear the audible gasp of the Jews. They're allowed into the presence of the Father too? This is revolutionary and powerful that the Gentile would be brought from so far all the way into direct access to the Father. And we see someone doing the action of this pulling of humanity to God.

That Jesus is doing the action. All the verbs used there, brought near. Jesus is the one that brought us near. Jesus is the one that made us both one. Jesus is the one that creates in Himself. Jesus is the one who reconciles. Jesus is the one who preaches peace.

And that's the grace portion. He did all the work. We reaped all the benefits. And now we are called to do likewise. Now what does that mean? If God did all the work and we reap all the benefits and we turn to our neighbor and we look at them and say, "Well, you need to do this in order for you to receive my peace." There's something very, very twisted and disturbing about that kind of picture.

We know about the parable of the unforgiving servant who is forgiven of much and he turns around and he can't forgive his brother. It's sick. And yet this is much of how we live when we look at certain people. You have been forgiven. Go and forgive. You have been loved.

Go and love. That is the call to us. And so back to verse 11, we are called to remember this. A Christian who forgets will wallow in disunity and demand justice for himself. A Christian who remembers will pursue unity and reconciliation and love and harmony. I mean, this is so hard.

Even on the freeways we like to do that. "That guy cut me off. I've got to box him in or something." There's something about us, wired in us, that we demand stuff. God has done it to those who are close and far. He doesn't pick favorites. He preaches peace for all people.

And so we are called to go and preach peace to all people. He reminds us what you have been given. Look at the amazing words again in verse 19. Now we're going cyclical here. Now we're going back to again what we've received from God. In verse 19, he says, "You are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens, saints, members of household of God.

You are adopted and chosen by God. You are loved by Him. For the Jew to hear this is like, 'What?' Gentiles like, 'Yeah!'" In Ephesians chapter 1, we see a lot of things. Remember who you were. In chapter 1, verse 3, it tells us of our blessings. That we have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing.

In verse 4, He chose you. In verse 5, He predestined you for adoption. In verse 7, He redeemed and forgave you, and lavishly so. In verse 10, there is a plan for uniting between heaven and earth. We get all of these things. And so here's the application, because even though this is my first week here, I've been hearing from Pastor Peter and Pastor Mark some of the things going on.

And one of the things that they told me is that for this year, we really want to concentrate on applying the truth that we know. Now this is where, again, the rubber meets the road, and it becomes very hard. This is a tough one today, because we are called to go out and pursue peace and reconciliation with others.

And this is to be a lifestyle. We are called to seek people out the very way we were sought out by God. If how God has sought us out and saved us brings you any joy, then that kind of joy needs to propel us into a life of extending that kind of peace with others.

Think about Ephesians 2, verses 1-10. All of these great gospel truths that make you weep. It's like, "Wow! You saved us when I was here. You saved me even though I didn't deserve it. You gave me grace, and you lavished it upon me. And now I have hope for living." And then in verse 11, less of us know of this passage, Anon, but it's the direct application of what it's called to look like, a uniting of people.

It's hard, because we don't want to pursue reconciliation. I'm pretty sure right now you can think of one or two, maybe three people in your life that you need to reconcile with, right? It's not that hard. Someone that God actually kind of places on your heart, and you feel a little guilty about it.

Why might you not want to pursue them? Just for several reasons. First, you think it's of no use. You think they'll never change. But we know that's not true. We know the power of the gospel. And when we think that way, we shortchange the power of the Spirit and the power of the Word of God, that God will melt hearts and break hearts.

Secondly, we might be lazy. It's too much effort to reconcile with someone, to pursue peace. I have so much going on in my life right now. How can I have any capacity at all for this? It takes too much prayer to constantly pray about this, and it boils me inside.

But that kind of lazy living is supremely unloving of others and supremely loving of self, especially if God has placed them on your heart. Thirdly, it's uncomfortable. You just don't like to feel the ache of conflict. That's why we like to avoid conflict and duck people. There's this person at my former church that we ended up reconciling, but there was a time when I just didn't want to see him.

I was like, "We're going to argue about this. He's going to say this." So I would kind of duck away. I did that for a couple of weeks until I knew I shouldn't. But we like to do that. It's just uncomfortable. Like the one before, it's very selfish, loving of self and unloving of others to do this.

Fourthly, you might be impatient. This is a partner to laziness. You want to put in the effort once, right? That's the type of society we live in. We put in something, and something comes out. We want that. And so since we don't see immediate results, we don't think that it's worth it.

There is no instant fix to this. So we don't pursue peace. And fifthly, I think this is the main culprit for us all. It's pride. We are proud people. We don't want to admit our own mistakes and do the deep work of unraveling it and confessing it to someone.

It's incredibly humbling having to do this. Or maybe you don't want to hear the other party kind of like, "They don't admit their wrongs." So you say, "I'm sorry." And then what do you want in return? You want to hear, "I'm sorry," back. If they don't say it, like, "Ahh!" We're proud.

We will say, "Sorry," only if we get that back. It infuriates us. But we are called to pursue peace. When there is no peace with someone, it really ends up doing something to our souls. It dilutes the gospel truth in our own life of the peace that God has given to us, the forgiveness and love that God has extended to us.

God went to the bitter end in his pursuit of peace with us. And it costs the life of Jesus. Who are we to say that we won't go the distance to pursue peace with others? How can we as Christians do that? That we sing these songs on Sundays, and we go to Bible studies, and we read our scripture passages every morning, and we pray all the time, and yet there is this dark side of our soul that just wants to keep this part hidden, and I don't want to touch it.

It's just, "Ahh!" We say, "You're not worth pursuing peace with for whatever reason." And when we say that, we're showing a lack of understanding of our great sin before God and what we ourselves have been forgiven of. So, Berean, we must go and pursue peace. You might ask, "Who do I do this for?" What if they don't want to be pursued?

What if they want nothing to do with me? You still pursue it. You obviously can't do this with every person in your life, but you begin with one, maybe two people. Don't throw everyone out with a baby with bathwater, okay? Don't be like, "Well, I can't pursue peace with everyone, so I will pursue peace with only no one." God places people in our hearts, and in those steps of faith, when we pursue peace with them, God sanctifies us and develops in us a heart and lifestyle of a peacemaker.

Even if that person doesn't want anything to do with you, doesn't even want your forgiveness or to forgive you, you can still pursue in the spirit of peace, and actually that deepens your understanding of the gospel and what was happening between us and God. We can't go into all the details of it, but I wanted to give just a practical resource.

It's called "The Peacemaker," written by Ken Sandy. I think it's a really helpful resource if you want to pursue reconciliation with someone. It's something to look into. So, church, this is the last application. Other than all the reconciliation you must pursue with people in your life, I would like for Berean to be a church and a place where we pursue peace with one another.

I'm a newcomer coming in, and I don't know anything of what's going on in here, honestly. So don't think I'm singling anything out right now. I'm not. I'm just talking about what the Bible says here about what a church is to look like. We must pursue unity, and if there's any bitterness or resentment or jealousy or hatred that is at the core of your heart when you're thinking of somebody or something or a policy or whatever it might be, all of these different things, whether you're right or wrong, whether they're right or wrong, it doesn't matter.

We are called to pursue peace here. We are called to do it, to pursue reconciliation in a wise and biblical manner, with counsel of godly people around us who are able to fill our blind spots. But we have to be bold here and never let the enemy have a foothold here in this church.

Like a weed, when the smallest sprout kind of sprouts up out of the soil, you know that the roots have already been growing for a long time. We need to uproot all of these things. If we see anything on the externals, that means there's a lot going down underneath.

Know that when the church pursues peace, when we go into the hard conversations of confronting one another and sharpening one another in this way, this is when the church actually really begins to deepen in the understanding of the gospel. We practice it. We don't just pretend like everything's okay and we hold hands and we just continue along.

We just come to services and Bible studies and things like that. But we really dive deep into one another. I hope that we can do that and that this church, Beruian, can be a church that's filled with the testimony of the gospel of God's peace given to us. Let's pray.

Dear God, You have forgiven us of much. You have redeemed us. You have atoned for our sins through the very blood of Jesus. You have given us peace through Him. And so God, help us to be Christians and a church that will pursue peace with one another and then go out into the world and pursue peace with others.

And Father, help us to do this. I pray for conviction. I pray, God, that we would actually begin to pursue people that You've placed into our hearts, in this room as well as outside, our families, our friends, our co-workers. And Father, we do this with much prayer, much reading of Scripture, much counsel, and that we would become people who really are peacemakers in our lives.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.