The Early Church Almost Split (Here's What Stopped It) | Cross Culture

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity

Sermons. This week we are continuing our sermon

series, Cross Culture, where we are looking at

what it means to be a multicultural church of

diverse languages, nations, and cultures that

all come together under the name of Jesus. Now

what is your house made of? Is it all brick?

Is it all wood? Is it all one type of stone?

Probably not. And in the same way, the church

is made up of a diversity of stones. That's what

we're going to uncover in today's sermon and

how each one of us is a part of this building,

this place that is the church. Today's reading

is from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 11 to 22,

Ephesians 2:11–22

and will be read in Ukrainian. English will be

on the screens for you to read along. So remember

that you, once with a bad body, that your so

-called hand -cut body is called uncut, that

you were without Christ at that time, separated

from the Israeli community and other people's

promises, having no hope without God in the world.

And now in Christ Jesus you, who were once far

away, have become close to the blood of Christ.

He is our peace, who made out of two one. He

destroyed the middle of the garden, the enemy

with his body. He destroyed the law of commandments

with his science, to build a new man with God,

to make peace, and to make peace with God with

Christ, both in one body, and to kill the enemy

in this. And when he passed away, he blessed

you with peace, far and near peace, for both

of us have an approach in the spirit of one to

the Father. The Word of the Lord. You know, the

Bible tells us that Jesus was the son of a carpenter.

And for that reason, a lot of people think that

Jesus himself was a carpenter. But actually,

the Greek word for carpenter is a word tekton.

And tekton actually means builder. And so carpenter

isn't necessarily the only or even the best fit

for what Jesus was. A lot of scholars think that

Jesus was actually more likely a stone worker

or a stone. mason. After all, most of the houses

in Israel were built with stone, not wood. And

trees were kind of hard to come by. They still

are kind of hard to come by there. So it'd be

kind of hard as a carpenter to probably to make

a living for yourself. Archaeologists have also

discovered that just around the corner from where

Jesus grew up, there was a large, there's a large

remnant of a stone quarry there, which is where

you get stone for building projects. And Just

around the corner from that, Herod was building

this huge city called Sepphoris, which would

have meant that there was lots of work for those

who were in the business of building with stone.

So imagine, therefore, Jesus is building a house,

not out of wood and nails, but out of stone,

and he's got his chisel there with him. He's

building, and he has the option of kind of building

that house with maybe one type of brick, in which

case he would take all the stones and he would

chisel them down so they're all kind of one uniform

shape. That's one option he has. The other option

Jesus would have would be to kind of take various

shapes and sizes of rocks and maybe they were

different colors and different materials and

came from like different sources or different

varieties and to make a house out of a brick

like that. Now, I think that if he was to use

like this variety of stones, that would probably

take a lot longer and it would be a lot more

difficult. I think it would be easier probably

just to build over and over again with one type

of brick over and over again. But I also think

that a mosaic of stones, of a bunch of different

stones, would look far more beautiful in the

end. But here is the thing. You know, Jesus didn't

come to build a physical house or to build physical

houses. Jesus came to earth to be with us to

build a spiritual house. Jesus came to... build

a church. I'm not talking about a church building.

I'm talking about the church, the people of the

church, which is why we just read, although Daniel

read it in Ukrainian beautifully, that in him,

you too, that's you, plural, are being built

together to become a dwelling in which God lives

by his spirit built on the foundation of the

apostles and the prophets. So the question is,

here's the question I have for you this morning.

If Jesus is building a spiritual house, he's

building his church. Is he going to build that

church with just one kind of stone, one kind

of person? Is it going to be a church where everybody

has the same appearance, everyone from the same

background, everyone speaks the same language,

everyone kind of looks and sounds the same? Or

is the spiritual house that he's building going

to involve like different people, different backgrounds,

a multicultural, multi -ethnic church? Now, again,

I would argue that if you were to build a church

out of just one kind of people, it would probably

be a lot easier. In fact, there's lots of evidence

that some of the fastest growing churches in

the world today focus on one homogeneous people

group. It's true. But even though it's more complicated,

and even though it takes more time, building

a church out of... People from different backgrounds

and different cultures, a mosaic of different

people is far stronger and more beautiful in

the end. Okay, so we are in the middle of a teaching

series we're doing this January called Cross

Culture, where we are looking at what does it

mean for us to live in a deeply diverse and multicultural

community right here in Mississauga. Last week,

I explained to you that it has always been God's

plan from the very beginning to gather to himself

a diverse and multicultural people. And you remember

last week, if you missed it, you can go back

and check. I took you through the whole Bible

from Genesis to Revelation to show that this

has always been God's plan to build his spiritual

house out of a diverse group of people, different

ethnicities, different nationalities, different

languages, and all that. But like I said, building

a church that way wasn't easy and isn't easy.

And today I want to show you how hard it was.

I want to show you how hard it is to create a

diverse church. But also I want to show you how

beautiful it is and how it's way better to do

it that way. And so what we're going to do is

we're going to go back 2 ,000 years ago. We're

going to look at the very first churches that

were being built by God in that pivotal time

when the church was just forming. And just like

any building project, what we're going to see

is in God's church, there were several phases

to that building project, and it wasn't easy.

I've given you some sermon notes. You should

have these. And I invite you to follow along

to make sure we all kind of leave having learned

something important this morning. So let's begin

with phase one of God's great building project,

right? When you're starting a building project,

it is usually a good idea to keep it simple.

right? You start with one kind of material, one

kind of brick, you know, but you got to make

sure you got something solid first before you

start making it too complex. And when God began

building his church, he did the exact same thing.

He started with one people, with one ethnicity,

who spoke one language, who came from even one

city, and all of the first followers of Jesus

were Jewish. They all lived in Jerusalem. Jesus

was Jewish. His disciples were Jewish. All the

first Christians were Jewish. They all, in that

way, looked the same. What God was doing in that

moment was building a faithful community. that

was being formed within Judaism. The first followers

of Jesus, they didn't leave Judaism, right? They

believed that this church was actually the fulfillment

of Judaism. And that's why Jesus would say things

like, hey, don't think that I came to abolish

the law or the prophets. I didn't come to abolish

them. I came to fulfill them. So you see the...

First church was holy and fully Jewish in all

of its culture and all of its practices. That's

why we read that those early Christians continue

to meet day by day together in the temple. And

we might say, well, why are they still meeting

in the temple? That's a Jewish thing, and these

people are Christians. Because the original church

was totally Jewish in its way of life, in its

ethnic identity. They loved the temple. They

loved the law. They loved the Sabbath. They loved

circumcision. Well, they probably didn't love

circumcision, but this was the first phase of

construction. right and so before the gospel

could cross into other cultures it had to start

in one culture you kind of had to look around

and see what were the bricks that you had around

to start building with and so yes the very first

church was monocultural they were all jewish

christians all in jerusalem and it was only when

the building seemed to kind of get strong enough

that you could start adding different stones

and that's exactly what happened Okay? Every

building project, I suppose, reaches some moment

when the materials change. And that first phase

of formation, which I called it, gave way to

this next phase of the building, which I want

to call tension. Tension. See, what happened

was that those Jewish Christians in Jerusalem

started to get persecuted by their other Jewish

friends who felt that this whole Jesus thing

was nonsense and was actually quite destructive

to Judaism. And so those Jewish Christians got

chased out of Jerusalem. They got scattered.

And some of them went, they went all over the

place, but some of them landed in this large

cosmopolitan Greek city that was called Antioch.

And there in Antioch, something really kind of

unexpected happened. These Jewish Christians

began to share their Christian faith with these

pagan Greek speaking foreigners who lived in

Antioch. And to their surprise, these foreigners

believed. The message of Jesus. A great number

of people believed and turned to the Lord. These

Greeks were like, hey, this sounds pretty good.

Hey, I believe in this Jesus. Hey, can I join

your church too? Which meant that at Antioch,

brand new stones. started showing up on the construction

site but these stones were very different these

stones came from a very different quarry and

and these two groups as you can see looked nothing

alike so for example for example jewish christians

they observed all the teachings of the torah

but but greek they didn't even know what the

Torah was and certainly wasn't their story. That

was the Jewish history. It was the Jewish story,

right? That wasn't their history. That wasn't

their background. And Jewish Christians, they

observed the Sabbath. They didn't work on the

Sabbath. But Greeks, they didn't have any category

for that. You know, like that didn't work. That

might have worked in Jerusalem, but that wouldn't

work in Antioch, taking a day off every week.

And Jews, they had especially very strict rules.

rules about the food you could eat. And there

was no way that a Jewish person would ever be

found having dinner with one of these Greek foreign

pagans in Antioch. They didn't follow the food

laws and they didn't follow the rituals. Paul

actually writes that in these ways, all these

Greeks were foreigners to the covenants of the

promise. God had promised all these things to

the Jewish people, but this was all foreign now

to this new brick, these new people that were

showing up. Oh, and of course, there was this

other thing. Yes, Jewish Christians were circumcised,

and the Greeks were like, say what? And in these

ways, and in lots of ways, these new stones just

didn't fit, didn't match with the original stones.

And so all sorts of tension was unavoidable.

And the question was, do these new stones need

to be chiseled down and shaped so that they look

like the original stones so that they can actually

be part of the building project? This was the

tension phase. And if you had to sum it up, what

you had was you had two cultures, but you had

one gospel and a whole lot of unresolved questions.

Two types of stones trying to build one spiritual

house, and they didn't fit together. Now, the

Jewish Christians could have said this. They

could have said, okay, listen, Greek. our greek

brothers and sisters we love you we're so glad

that you found jesus but here's what you should

do go over there and build your own church and

kind of speak your own language and do things

your way and we're going to go over here and

we're going to build our own church and do things

our way that way the things that we're doing

don't annoy you and the things that you're doing

don't like disgust us kind of a thing That was

one option. Use this brick to build one church.

Use this brick over here to build a separate

church. But, but, but, after a lot of prayer

and after a lot of debate and after a lot of

struggle, the leaders of the church decided,

no, it'd be way better if they could find a way

to build this church together. If they could

find a way to get these stones to fit together.

And so what they did is they had this big meeting

down in Jerusalem. And at that meeting, actually

it was Jesus' brother, James. Jesus had a brother

named James who got up during the meeting and

he says, here's what I think. I think we should

not make it difficult. for the Gentiles who are

turning to God. And they decided it does not

make sense for these Greeks to have to observe

all the Jewish food laws. And it does not make

sense to make Torah observance an entry requirement

into our new church. And it does not make sense

for these Greek men to get circumcised. And this

wasn't James saying, by the way, none of these

laws matter anymore. No, this was James saying

that the church we are making cannot be reduced

to one cultural way of life. Now, you would think

that that would have resolved all the tension,

but the truth is that just creates... tension

because now you've got these two groups and they're

trying to figure out how to live together you

know for if you're a jew for example how do you

live faithfully in this foreign city in this

pagan city where for example nobody observes

the sabbath how do you how do you keep observing

the sabbath and if you're a greek how do you

now follow a jewish messiah without being a jewish

person yourself you had all these clashing of

cultures and and ideas and and if we're honest

was really straining the bricks. It was really

straining the mortar at that time. I want to

just pause for a second. I want to say this kind

of tension still shows up in churches today.

It even shows up here at Trinity. And sometimes

our diversity as a church can lead things to

not line up so neatly either. Like, for example,

some of you here, you come from a cultural background

where you really appreciate quiet prayers. And

you grew up, when you went to church, it was

just lovely, beautiful, quiet liturgy. And you

find all the loud music we sing very distracting.

Others of you, you grew up in a setting where

you would love loud praise and worship music,

and you find quiet prayers and liturgical prayers

to be completely lifeless. Guess what? Maybe

you're both right. Maybe you're both wrong. It's

just that you're different. Or let's take the

idea of time, for example. Some people grew up

in a culture where time is, you have to be very,

very punctual. And that's why if the Sunday service

is running late, you're like, why are they always

running behind? And you are looking at your watch.

Other cultures have a very different view of

time. I mean, they could, the service could go

on forever and ever. And they would be like,

why are they cutting things short? Why is Rob

rushing to get through the service? He should

just let it be. Why are we always trying to watch?

Watch the clock, right? You see, there's different

cultures. For example, I want to tell you this

Christmas Eve. I had someone tell me, Rob, that

was the best Christmas Eve sermon I have ever

heard. And then the next day I had someone tell

me, Rob, that was the worst Christmas Eve sermon

I have ever heard. And I'm not even joking about

that. I had someone say to me, Christmas Eve

is no place for the celebration of communion.

And they sent me a letter about it. Can you imagine

how many letters I would have got if I had canceled

communion on Christmas Eve, right? What I'm saying

is this does not mean, uh -oh, something's gone

wrong at Trinity Streetsville. All it shows us

is that our churches, like that church in Antioch,

we are made up of stones that are cut from different

quarries, and we bring all that with us when

we gather together. And in Antioch, The walls

were creaking and cracking and the mortar was

straining. The question was, could the gospel

that had brought these two groups together, was

that gospel strong enough to hold these two groups

together? Or would the church end up splitting?

Well, the answer to that question is actually

found. Years later and hundreds of miles away

in a different church in a city called Ephesus.

Because it was there that this tension was finally

understood and finally resolved. I want you to

think of it this way. Antioch was like the construction

site. It was dusty. It was noisy. Things were

unfinished. But years later in Ephesus. This

other church gave us a glimpse of what a truly

integrated spiritual house could look like. Jews

and Greeks, different stones, different people,

different backgrounds. A church that Paul says

was held together by Christ himself. Paul writes

about this church in Ephesus. He says, for Jesus

himself is our peace, who has made these two

groups one. and has destroyed the barrier, the

dividing wall of hostility. Now notice, it wasn't

that the Ephesian church achieved this amazing

unity by ignoring the difference. They didn't

just say, oh heck, agree to disagree, go along

to get along. But no, what they're saying is

Jesus actually created this unity between us.

Jesus brought us together. It was actually Jesus

who was doing something. In our midst. And the

reason was, Paul said, that this diverse church

was able to hold together was because they were

built on the foundation of the apostles and the

prophets and Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

Now, the cornerstone isn't just another brick.

You guys know that this stone, the cornerstone,

is the big one that determines how all the other

stones line up. Which means different stones

don't have to match each other as long as they're

aligned. Different people don't have to match

each other as long as they're all lined up with

Jesus. And so what was happening was, in Ephesus,

these different bricks were becoming one building

in Christ. Jewish believers didn't stop being

Jewish. Gentile believers didn't have to become

Jewish. Both groups were being built into something

that neither one of them could become on their

own. And this is really important, that when

you build a church this way, two incredible things

happen. First, the church becomes stronger. Home

builders will actually, I think, tell you this,

that it's not necessarily the strongest way to

build a house to use the same material over and

over and over and over and over again. Use different

materials. Use stone. Use timber. Use steel.

Because each one can kind of carry the weight

differently. Strength does not come from sameness.

It comes from how different materials work together.

And that's exactly what happened in the Ephesian

church. that the other needed and as a result

the church got stronger now i want to give you

one little example of this but here's one example

jewish christians spoke about jesus as the messiah

and that was a very very rich word for them it

had to do with their their ancient story the

torah the story of of who jesus was that meant

so much to them that's how they understood who

jesus was he was the messiah but for greek -speaking

gentiles That word meant absolutely nothing to

them, right? That they didn't share that history.

So they needed a word that made sense to them

about who Jesus was. And they found that word

in the word Lord, the Greek word Kyrios, right?

That was a word they understood because in their

old pagan days, they had used the word Lord to

talk about their deities. And they actually used

the word Lord to talk about emperors. They used

the word Lord to talk about anything that had

supreme power and authority. Now, to Jewish ears,

when they heard the Greeks calling Jesus Lord,

it sounded really risky. It sounded like, you

know, they were distorting the faith. It was

a very poor substitute, they would have said,

for the word Messiah. But to the Greeks, the

word Messiah was like outdated, foreign, and

confusing to them. But something really surprising

happened. Having both words turned out to be

better than having just one. Because Jews then

started to think about Jesus as Lord, Lord of

all creation. Jesus, Lord with authority over

all things. That is actually something we haven't

maybe thought about that way before. And of course,

when Gentiles learned that Jesus was the long

-expected Messiah of Israel, that changed their

thinking. And now their faith was more rooted

in Israel's scriptures, right? And this is why

Andrew Wall said that crossing a cultural frontier

like this led to a creation. movement in theology.

Can you imagine that? Creative theology, where

the eternal Lord was also understood as the Messiah

of Israel. And at first, it always felt like

something was being lost, right? Oh, we're losing

our thing. We're losing our thing. No, no. But

it always resulted in gain, right? Jesus wasn't

either Messiah or Lord. He was both. And only

together could they see the full strength of

who Jesus was. That made the building stronger.

It didn't just make the building stronger. It

made the building more beautiful. Because, I

don't know, I think when I walk around and look

at houses, a house that is built of just one

material, it may be efficient, but it is rarely

beautiful. But a mix of stones. brings out all

the color, brings out all the beauty. Paul puts

it this way. It's in our unity. It's when we're

together that the knowledge of the Son of God

becomes a full picture, a whole picture. And

we can see the fullness of who Christ is. You

can't see the fullness of who Christ is from

one culture alone, but it's only when we come

together, right? Jewish believers didn't see

the whole picture without the Gentiles. The Gentile

believers didn't see the whole picture without

the Jewish believers. And here at Trinity, I

think it's safe to say sometimes we might worry

about the same thing. We might worry that our

differences will result in some kind of loss.

But again and again, differences actually result

in gain for everyone. I mean, it's true that

we, let's say we don't all come from a culture

that reads the scriptures the same way. Some

of us come to the scriptures as a story. Others

come to the scriptures as more of like a source

of all truth. But when we read it both ways,

we gain. We don't lose anything, we gain. Theologically,

we don't all come from the same spot, right?

But that is not a loss because when we come together,

it helps us learn and grow and see more of the

beauty of who Christ is. And Ephesians tells

us that as long as we're in Christ, that's important,

as long as we're in Christ, those differences

are not a loss. they're always a gain it isn't

subtraction it's always multiplication we gain

strength we gain beauty when all of us are here

and now i'm going to kind of quickly move to

the last two phases of the building project as

beautiful and as hopeful as the ephesian moment

was it didn't last and it wasn't because they

did something wrong it wasn't because the vision

was wrong it's because history intervened You

know, every building project eventually faces

something out of its control, and the early church

was no different. In the year A .D. 70, Rome

destroyed Jerusalem. Rome destroyed the temple.

And for all of those Jewish Christians, it was

like their heart had been ripped out. It was

like they lost their center of gravity, and they

were unanchored and unmoored, and they really

began to drift. And pretty soon, Jewish Christians

gathered together with each other in synagogues

more than they gathered together in church. And

so over time, this church that had, you know,

once held Jewish and Gentile believers together,

now it's started to lose one of its foundational

stones, right? And so that brief period of unity

was broken by history and by violence and by

displacement. And the church now, it continued

to grow, but now it grew unevenly. And it became

increasingly this brick now, right? It was mostly

Greeks and Romans and Gentiles, not Jewish culture.

That Jewish culture was kind of pushed to the

margin. It slowly kind of was largely forgotten.

And as Andrew Walls noted, that it wasn't long

before the church had become monocultural again.

The bricks were the same again, but a different

kind of sameness. Right? Isn't that interesting?

This is how history goes. Empires rise and fall

and the church adapts. But what about that vision?

What about God's vision? One building with many

different stones. Is that vision over? Is it

over? No, absolutely not. Because we find ourselves

living in phase five of God's great building

project. And diversity of the church is being

restored in a way that you would not believe.

The conditions that made that Ephesian moment

possible have returned, but they have returned

on a much bigger scale for us. And again, it's

not because we planned it. It's just, again,

history has shifted once more. Today, the center

of gravity of Christianity is no longer in Europe

or in North America. The majority of Christians

now live in Africa, they live in Asia, or they

live in Latin America. And for example, there

are more Anglican churches in Nigeria than there

are in Canada, plus the UK, plus the United States

of America, right? Stephen Bevins wrote that

by 2025, two -thirds of all Christians will live

in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The average

Christian today, is female, black, and lives

in a Brazilian shantytown or an African village.

At the same time as the center of Christianity

has shifted globally, guess what else has happened?

Global migration has brought people from all

those regions into cities like ours. Mississauga,

guess what? The world has moved to your doorstep.

The nations have come to our city. which means

that the Ephesian moment has returned on this

global scale. And once again, churches can be

shaped by vastly different histories and different

languages and different customs, you know, different

people being brought together. Guys, this is

not a theory. This is what is happening right

here in congregations like ours. Only now, it's

not just that there's two cultures. It's dozens

of cultures. It's hundreds of cultures. A mosaic

of stones have shown up from every imaginable

quarry you could think of. And just like before,

we might be tempted to see this as a problem

instead of a gift. Because, of course, all that

change, that feels very, very threatening to

us. And we may fear losing something we love.

But as Paul reminded us, remember, in Christ,

we never lose when this happens. We always gain.

We gain strength. Because no single culture can

carry the weight of the whole gospel. And we

gain beauty. Because Christ looks more like Christ

when he is reflected through many cultures, not

just one. So the question before us and the question

I want to leave with you today is not how do

we protect what we have? It's what are we building

here? The question is, will we allow Christ to

build what he wants? Will we retreat into comfort

and familiarity or will we step into this new

Ephesian moment? Trusting that the same Christ

who once held together Jews and Gentiles can

now even hold together a far more diverse church

today. I'm telling you people, the stones are

all here. The question is, what are we going

to do with them? But let me just end with this.

Whatever we're building, it must be built on

the one foundation. With Christ Jesus being the

cornerstone. Because if Christ is our cornerstone,

then our unity does not depend on us agreeing

with each other or looking like each other. Our

unity depends on us aligning ourselves to him.

And when we do, guess what? We become one building

with many stones held together by Christ. So

let's do that. Let's, as a church, continue to

build something beautiful together. Thanks be

to God. Amen.