ONE

The girl says to you, I really like you but just want to be good friends.

And then you discover that they've been texting and messaging your best friend

behind your back and carrying on a relationship with them.

How do you feel?

Angry.

And the question is, when the anger flares, what do you do with the hostility?

Angry.

What do you do with the anger that you feel towards this person who was before your friend?

Or when you're married, your spouse has a credit card.

Maybe you've seen your mum and dad do this.

And they go on a shopping trip and they load up the credit card.

They just come back from the shops having spent a lot more than they were meant to have spent

on the credit card.

And mum or dad suddenly realises that the other one has caused the family huge problems for

the next few months as they grapple with paying a debt which they're otherwise unable to afford.

And so one of them is very, very angry with the other.

What do you do with the hostility?

What do you do with the anger?

Well, you've got your mum and dad's car.

They've given it to you.

You're on your red peas.

And you do what you know you shouldn't have done.

You've had a couple of drinks.

It's not very intoxicated but you have an accident.

And the car's not covered by insurance.

And you've got to go home.

Well, the policeman takes you home to tell your mum and dad the story of what has happened.

They're furious.

What does it take to remove the hostility?

Now, I can give you Ephesians 2 in a nutshell.

So let me tell you Ephesians 2 in a nutshell.

The first half which Deb preached last week is about how God removes hostility between him

and people.

And the second part where I'm particularly focusing tonight but I want to spend a little

bit of time in the first part is how God deals with hostility between people.

So between us and God and between us and one another.

And he uses a particular example to make that.

So if you remember that, you've got the thruster tonight but it's quite another thing to take

it to heart and apply it to yourself and what that means.

So Ephesians chapter 2 is written against a background of hostility.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

And the hostility is on those two different fronts.

And Deb preached to us last week from verses 1 to 10 which is a fantastic passage.

And in that passage, the hostility which is described is justified.

It's between good people and God and it's about us giving offence to God and God being

angry with us.

And in verse 1 it says,

Now that's a mouthful if you've never heard it before but let me tell you it's very simple.

You, me and everybody else dead in transgressions and sin.

God is justifiably angry and we are described as by nature objects of his anger.

So people who have rejected God, which is the whole lot of us, are dead meat as far as God

is concerned without Christ.

And it's a problem because when you're dead, you can't do anything to change your circumstance.

Death is the ultimate description of helplessness.

So the big message of the first half of Ephesians is what God has done about this situation.

So in verses 4 and 5 he declares the great news, the great thing that God has done.

He's taken the initiative, he's stepped into this situation and it says,

And so it says that God has actually stepped into the middle of this hostility himself, even though it's his own anger.

He stepped into the ring, he's struck a death blow to sin and death.

He died for us, he's brought us out from under his anger and we have been brought from death to life and this is described, it is by grace you have been saved.

But the second half of Ephesians is about a different kind of hostility.

Hostility is something that we all understand, we participate in, we've been in both sides of it, we've been really angry with somebody ourselves, we know that experience.

And we also know the other experiences, which is quite a helpless experience sometimes, is to be on the receiving end of another person's anger.

They're angry with me and I can't control their anger, they're just dumping on me and I'm feeling it and I'm crushed by it.

God has been keeping his promises and working his purposes out through the Old Testament part of the Bible, through the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob for nearly 2,000 years before this is written.

And in the words of Isaiah, God's people, the Jews were meant to be a light to the Gentiles.

And the goodness of God was supposed to be seen in them.

And nations were intended to be drawn to the Lord God Almighty who had been so kind and faithful to his people.

People were meant to look on and say, I want to be part of that.

But the reality was different.

And the Jews had received all this goodness from God and instead of holding it with humility and holding it out in an embracing way to the nations,

they had this great sense of entitlement and privilege.

And they're proud of the special status that God gave them.

And they looked down their noses, they despised those that didn't share it.

You know, we sit in church, don't we, tonight?

Right.

And for those of us who understand the salvation that we've received, it is a very great thing.

But what an appalling thing to hold it to ourselves and not want to share it with others.

It's the grace of God that we've come under in the first place.

So the Jews had a name for everybody else in the world who wasn't a Jew.

They called them, our translation, Gentile.

But in Greek, it's ethnos, the ethnics.

We translate it nations.

And when you use the word nations, we probably think of that as quite a good, a positive sort of translation.

But for Jews to refer to the ethnos, it was a term of derision and hate.

So if you weren't a Jew, you're an ethnic.

John Stott, in his commentary, wrote that the Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile.

The Gentile said the Jews were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell.

That's what you were made for.

Is anybody here tonight from a Jewish background, if you want to say?

You don't have to.

My presumption is that most of us aren't.

And so for the Jews, we are fodder for the fires of hell.

Back here.

And God said, God, they said, loves only Israel of all the nations that he has made.

It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in childbirth.

For that would simply be to bring another Gentile into the world.

And until Christ came, the Gentiles were an object of contempt to the Jews.

The barrier between them was absolute.

If a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl or a Gentile girl married a Jewish boy,

the family would have the funeral for them.

Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death.

The separation between Jew and Gentile was seen in the temple.

God didn't actually live in the temple,

but the centre of the temple was the symbol of where God's name was

and his place was and how he dwelt with his people.

And the Jews could come fairly close,

but the Gentiles had to stand at a distance and look,

stand outside the gate, stand outside the wall and look into the temple,

but not come close into the temple.

And archaeologists have actually found some of the signs

which were around the temple, saying, stop.

And they said these words exactly,

no foreigner may enter within the barrier and enclosure around the temple.

Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his own ensuing death.

Stop or die.

Really interesting, you catch a glimpse of it in the book,

in Acts of the Apostles,

because there's a place there where Paul is in serious trouble with the Jewish authority

because they heard a rumour that he'd actually desecrated the temple

by taking Jews into the temple area.

Something he shouldn't, he didn't do it, but that's what they thought he did.

So these guys really hated one another.

And the hatred is particularly driven by the Jew towards the Gentile.

There is a state of enmity between two groups of people

that God had always intended to draw to himself.

Now we understand hostility.

We played with that at the beginning.

We engage in it one way or another.

We've been on the giving and we've been on the receiving end, I presume.

When people are fighting,

when they're having a quarrel with one another,

we have to be very careful when we listen to one another's stories.

Who do we listen to first?

We listen to our friend, don't we?

In my family,

the kids when they're younger,

they don't do it anymore,

but they have a spat with one another.

And sometimes they come running to mum or dad

and both of them may be trying to tell their story

and win their case and win you over

and help you to understand why the other one got it exactly wrong

and I was right.

And Kerry and I get involved

and all of a sudden,

Kerry and I are arguing and fighting with one another

and the kids patch it up over here.

And you look back afterwards

and you scratch your head and think,

how did I get involved in that?

And it's the same with adults.

We listen to our friends.

We know that they always tell us the truth.

But we know that they tell us their hurts

from their perspective and with their flavour.

And most of us shade ourselves in a better light

than the person that we disagree with

because we probably want to convince you

that we're right and they're wrong, don't we?

One thing's absolutely certain.

There's always another side.

And sometimes it's come from a really simple thing

at the beginning of one person

just not understanding clearly

what the other person was trying to communicate.

I said something to a friend the other week

and it muddied the waters for me

and it created feelings of distress and alienation,

all sorts of things.

And then we talked about it.

And when we talked about it,

I realised that I'd distorted things in my mind

and gone to places on my own

where I'd got it wrong.

Ephesians chapter 2 is a wonderful chapter

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

and verses 11 to 22 in particular

because it declares that God has engaged

in a great exercise in conflict resolution between people.

God is in the business of repairing and restoring relationships.

And he addresses both sides of this Jew-Gentile divide

one at a time.

He goes to the Gentile first,

the ethnic, the ethnos.

And in verse 12 he says,

Now let's put ourselves in those shoes because that's us.

Before Christ,

you were destitute.

We were destitute.

We weren't part of the covenants

or the deals that God had done with people.

They didn't know him.

We were genuine no-hopers,

no relationship with God's people,

no relationship with God.

We stood outside his promises.

We had nothing to look forward to

except judgment and rejection,

fodders for the fires of hell,

as our Jewish enemies would say.

But it's not where God wants things to remain.

And in verse 13 it says,

But now in Christ you who were once far off

have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

God has acted to bring those who were far off near.

He's brought us in.

And he's brought us in from a long way out.

And he didn't do it by making us Jews.

We are brought near to God by the blood of Christ

shed on the cross for our sins.

We have been forgiven

through the undeserved kindness and grace of God.

It's a wonderful message.

It's a wonderful place that we've been brought to.

But this is not a hostility.

This is not a divide

which is about one side being really wrong

and the other side being right.

Both sides have to move in their thinking

and in their stance.

They both have to understand God in a new way

for true reconciliation to occur.

And so he turns and he speaks to the Jews

and he says in verse 15,

Christ has abolished the law

with its commandments and ordinances.

that he might create in himself one new humanity

in the place of the two

thus making peace.

And he might reconcile both groups to God

in one body through the cross

thus putting to death that hostility through it.

It's a big statement.

The commandments and the laws have been abolished.

That is a bombshell which was dropped by the Lord Jesus himself

and it got him executed.

It's continued in the lives of the apostles

and some of them are losing their lives for it as well.

Because I think if you're a Jew

and you hear somebody come along

and say the commandments and the laws have been abolished

then what you really hear

when that is said

you hear something said like

it's now okay to lie

and steal

and commit adultery

and do murder

and do whatever you like

go for it

because these guys are saying

the law has been abolished.

But that's not what it's about.

The law has been abolished

but in a sense

it has been completely superseded.

Everything that the law was designed to do

has been met in Christ.

It has been completely fulfilled in Christ.

When I was a child

I'd go with my mum

and do the shops in D.Y.

Deb probably did this too.

Hmm.

All the banks in the northern beaches

were down in D.Y.

even before Inghamall.

That says how old I am doesn't it?

And

my mum would queue up

one after another

at three or four different banks

moving money around

and she'd have me and my brother and sister in tow

and we were really little

and we'd go from one bank to another

getting bored stiff

while she waited in queues

while they counted money

and sometimes going back

to the first bank

that she started with

because she had to take something back there

after she'd gone to that one.

I got sick of writing on those bank slips.

You don't do that anymore.

You sit at home

you push a few buttons on the internet

we still love money don't we?

We move it around

we haven't got the tax for money

but you do it on the internet

it's all done in five minutes

and you go home

old ways are made completely obsolete

by the new

and thank God for it.

You guys and girls have got it easy.

So Jesus has made the old way obsolete

and even the Jews have to move ground

in their understanding

of this process of reconciliation.

They can't cling to the things they used to.

So when Jesus died on the cross

the Jews long awaited Messiah

became the perfect sacrifice

that never needed to be offered again.

He died for the sins of his own people

the Jews

but he also died for the sins

of people in the world

who knew nothing of God

and nothing of his people Israel.

He died for the nations as well.

And that's why he writes

in verses 17 and 18

he came and proclaimed

peace to you who were far off

and peace to those who were near

for through him both of us

have access in one spirit to the father

peace to the far off the Gentiles

peace to those who were near the Jews

the hostility that existed between them

and that kept them separated

has been completely extinguished

and dealt with in Christ.

We have been brought together

by the Lord Jesus Christ

he has made us one

through Jesus

we have access to God

through his spirit.

And you get this picture

of God being the most amazing reconciler

bringing people who absolutely hated

one another's guts together

and it happened through the death of his son

by the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ

and God extinguished hostility

between himself and people

he removed hostility

between people and people

you and me

that we can be in relationship again.

And it's God's church

that bears witness to that reality.

Verse 19

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens

but you are citizens with the saints

and also members of the household of God

built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets

with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone

and in him the whole structure is joined together

and grows into a holy temple in the Lord

in whom you also are built together spiritually

into a dwelling place for God.

You get this magnificent picture

of God doing something quite glorious

in building his church.

People who were once deadly enemies

are brought together by the blood of Christ.

Outsiders are now regarded as citizens

and members with the saints.

In fact it says

we're built upon the foundations

of the apostles and prophets.

That's a great description

because the apostolic preaching

which is recorded in the New Testament

as well as the prophets of the Old Testament

the scriptures anticipating the coming of Christ

it's really saying

in a funny way

that the church is founded

on the word of God.

And so word based ministry

is at the heart of what we do

it brings the dead to life.

And the cornerstone

of this magnificent building

is Christ himself.

We keep proclaiming

the life saving message

of a crucified and resurrected saviour.

We believe

if you believe in Jesus

you respond to that message

and trust Jesus Christ as Lord

you are saved.

So it's talking about

God's people together.

This is not you just in your seat

by yourself.

This is us as a group of people

together

that God is corporately

building into a spiritual building

in which his spirit dwells.

I would think that

before I came tonight

if I asked many of you

where does the Holy Spirit dwell

if you're a Christian believer

you would have said in my heart

he indwells me

and he empowers my life

and that's a true thing to say.

But the language here

in this passage

is not focused on you

and your individual experience

it's focused on

the powerful effect

of the spirit of God

being at work

in the body of his people.

If you understand this teaching

it should completely transform

the way you view church.

I've got a hunch

that a lot of people

at 5 o'clock

or 5.30

don't have the same

sorts of problems

as some of the people

in the morning.

I think people

and some of us

have good theology

have good Bible understanding

when we read these things

but our passions

and our feelings

lead us to places

that don't really reflect it.

Probably an example of that

a while back

talking about

if you changed the church around

and changed it

from one direction

to another

and one person said

but this is the church

and it's so important

that we've got the long aisle

and why is it important

that we've got the long aisle?

So it's there for us

to have a long aisle

to walk down

when we do weddings.

And the notion of church

and the importance

of the building

anyway gets distorted

and we go to funny places

with it.

The church of God

is not the building

it's a spiritual community

and so the church

is not the building

as beautiful

or as ugly

as you think this is

everybody will have

their own opinions

about what they think

about the building

this is a space

in which the people of God

gather to worship God

and to encourage

each other in Christ.

And if this building

wasn't here

or if our government

said to us

in a few years

down the track

you can't meet there

you're not allowed

to gather as Christians

I hope that you

would ignore the government

at that point

and maybe not come

to this building

because it might be

dangerous for you

but go and meet

down in Blue Gum Forest

or Beach and Park

devil provide the toilets

and the food

but Beach and Park

or somebody's home

but go somewhere

meet together

and do the same sorts

of things

that we're doing

tonight in this building

and you see the beauty

and the miracle

of what God has done

he gathers people

from whom his hostility

has been removed

and from that

he opens the door

to relating

without hostility

to one another

we've already said

most of us

don't come from

Jewish backgrounds

this is about us

where we've come

we've been brought in

we are privileged outsiders

who have been invited

into the family

by the blood of Christ

maybe not so much

tonight

but in the morning

there are so many

different ethnicities

which are represented

in our church family

and we gather

as the people of God

and when we gather

as the people of God

we gather as one

because God has dealt

with our hostilities

in the cross

of the Lord Jesus Christ

no one culture

stands over another

we need the blood

of the Lord Jesus Christ

to make us one

it's not just in house

that this teaching applies

or it's not just in house

that this remarkable building

has an impact

and remember

this remarkable building

is a spiritual community

it impacts God's world

as well

we as a body

in the sermon

on the mount

Jesus calls us

to be salt and light

not just as individuals

but as the body

of believers

that we are

in the world

in which we live

I had a fantastic time

over the last week

reading a book

by Michael Cassidy

who was the long term

leader of African

Evangelistic Enterprise

which is the organisation

that Darian and Vanessa

serve with in Africa

and he wrote a book

he's written a number

of books

but one of the books

he wrote

was called

A Witness Forever

and it's an account

of South Africa's transition

from apartheid

to democracy

which is in the early 1990s

the year was 1994

and at the beginning

of April

a civil war

began in Rwanda

that led to genocide

which claimed

800,000 lives

in 100 days

it's one of the most

appalling things

that's happened

in my own lifetime

and at the same time

South Africa

was sitting

on a powder keg

and people believed

that something similar

might happen

the first post-apartheid

democratic election

where Nelson Mandela

became the president

was scheduled

for the end of April

and one of the major

black African parties

was refusing

to take part

in the election

so it wasn't just

black white apartheid

all that sort of stuff

it was black on black

and there were all sorts

of groups and rivalries

all over the place

and the consequence

could only be

civil war

if the election

went ahead

and it could only be

civil war

if it didn't go ahead

and the world

was watching

and everyone knew

that a bloodbath

was likely

now the international

mediators

Henry Kissinger

who was really famous

for his mediation

in the Middle East

and Lord Carrington

from

Kissinger was from the US

and Carrington

was from Britain

arrived in South Africa

on April 12

and these were

two big world

hot shots

at conflict resolution

and they spent

no more than

48 hours

meeting all the main

players

and they got back

on their planes

and they flew home

on April 15

having made

zero progress

and with Kissinger

predicting

Armageddon

election in South Africa

election day

loomed only two weeks

ahead

April 27

12 days in fact

and still

with no solution

no man made solution

long story

many twists and turns

great book to read

but 12 days later

when a relatively

peaceful election

occurred

most of the

secular media

the people

who don't give

Christians

a very good run

most of the

secular media

was talking

about this event

in terms of

a miracle

that God

had intervened

and talking

about the glory

of what had

occurred

two weeks

before

Kissinger

had walked

past Michael

Cassidy

and scoffed

at him

when he said

I'm praying

for you

what happened

well a lot

of things

happened

and many

of them

over a period

of time

but God

pulled the

strings

in quite

miraculous

ways

to draw

them together

in these

next 10

days

and people

were able

to see

that God

brought

reconciliation

God

ended

hostility

in his

own way

when the

very best

efforts

of the

world's

biggest

minds

had

completely

failed

there'd

been a

process

which had

been going

on for

several

years

where God's

people

a group

of

Christians

had hosted

meetings

at a

game lodge

in a

quiet part

of South

Africa

where over

a period

of time

numbers of

significant

political

leaders

had come

and they'd

met with

one another

with their

guns under

their pillows

but they'd

met with

one another

face to

face

man to

man

and they

told their

stories to

each other

of where

they'd come

from and

expressed their

difference and

talked about the

things that they

had been grappling

with and so they

could no longer

hide behind their

opinions and their

ideologies they

had to face one

another as people

and talk as

people and many

of them discovered

that their deadly

enemy was in

fact a Christian

person who shared

a deep Christian

faith and they

became able to

listen to one

another because

God in Christ

had removed the

hostility that they

had with one

another and the

other thing that

was going on there

are many other

things going on but

one of the things

going on was that

the church was in

earnest prayer all

across the nation

our people from all

sides and

backgrounds were

praying it

culminated in a

weekend where 30

thousand people came

and prayed in one

place they wanted

double that number

but people with

guns stopped many

of them even getting

there but people

broke into smaller

gatherings all over

Africa and were

praying for their

nation and the

crazy thing was that

the rest of the

world the first world

was sending in their

top journalists their

top conflict

journalists to film a

bloodbath and God's

people were on their

knees in a most

dramatic way but the

cross of the Lord

Jesus Christ is what

removes God's anger

from us it humbles

our own hearts when

we realize how much

we have been forgiven

and it gives us the

starting point for

beginning to forgive

another friends the

gospel of the Lord

Jesus Christ should

transform each one of

us first so if you

don't know Christ

you're not in a

position to be able

to begin reconciling

with other people

because you need to

have your own sins

dealt with first

but having had your

sins dealt with it

should then become the

transforming power in

the relationships that

we have with one

another I loved reading

Michael Cassidy's book

it had me in tears at

many points because it

reminded me again that

God is powerful in

prayer and by his

spirit to remove

hostility between

people even nations

for us to be able to

sit with a brother or

sister in Christ and

hear what life and the

world is like for them

before we begin to

judge them and push

our genders and our

grievances on them

it comes back in a

really practical way

it comes back into our

families it comes back

into marriages perhaps

marriages which are

struggling relationships

which are struggling

if you are married to a

Christian person if

you're planning to get

married to a Christian

person and I hope that

you are when you marry

they're not just your

spouse they're also your

brother or sister in

Christ whom he has

redeemed

marriage counsellor said

to me once he said

they said don't stop

talking and listening to

one another and some

marriages some

relationships wither on

the vine as we retreat

into hurt shells and

stop communicating and

what happens is tenderness

gets lost guilt and

resentment grows but God

has given us great tools

in Christ for dealing

with hostility and

resentment and finding a

true and rich

reconciliation which

glorifies God

it's the same in our

church family

things happen sometimes

which hurt and wound

deeply

wrongs occur between

people how we speak

what we say what we

thought we withdraw from

one another we no longer

talk to that person and

all that does is confirm

the fractures but God

has given us the tools to

keep communicating in

Christ to love one

another and to experience

deep reconciliation which

gives him glory he gives

us the power to be able to

begin to forgive and to lay

aside the anger and the

hostility so I want to say

if God can save a nation

heal and save a nation

which I think he did do in

South Africa not the end of

the story but he certainly

did back in 94 surely he is

powerful to deal with

hostility that we have and

experience in in our

families and in our church

family in Ephesians

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2 it says in

Christ Jesus we who were

far away have been brought

near by the blood of

Christ we've been brought

near to Christ we've also

been brought near to one

another and Christ binds us

together or builds us

together into a dwelling in

which God lives by his

spirit let me pray we do

pray heavenly father that

you would help us to grow

in our understanding of

what it means to be indwelt

by your spirit in a

corporate way we cherish

you we we thank you for

your mercy where you have

saved us and where

individually we know

something of your spirit at

work within us but we pray

here at St Paul's that we

might know something even

greater which is the power

of your spirit at work in

us as a body as a body

that we would be a

transforming influence in

this community in which we

live and we pray this in

Jesus precious name and for

his sake amen

him

so

us