"Reconciling Grace" Ephesians 2:17-19 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning we'll look at verses 17 through 19 of Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Hear the word of our Lord.

And he, speaking of Jesus in verse 17, came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and peace to those who were near.

So through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

This is the word of the Lord may seal it in our hearts.

We'll look at verses 20 through 22, Lord willing, next week.

These three verses, 17 through 19, describe our pursuit of peace.

And so much in the world is the pursuit of peace.

Peace is what we long for.

Peace is what we pursue in many ways in the world.

The word peace is a fascinating word.

It means to have two parties that were once hostile have cessation of hostilities.

That's what the word peace means.

Peace is not a word in either English or Greek that means people that don't have hostilities.

I mean, there's a word for that in English.

That word is neutrality.

When you are crossing somebody in the street or you see somebody in the park that you don't know and you don't have interaction with, you stay out of each other's way.

That doesn't mean you're at peace with them.

That just means there's neutrality with them.

The word peace in both English and Greek has this implication to it that there were hostilities and the hostilities have ceased.

You have been reconciled, and through reconciliation, you now possess peace.

This is a critical component of our world view because our world lacks peace.

Our world is filled with conflict and strife because our world is filled with sin and division.

And so the desire in our heart is to have peace.

There's conflict and strife in marriage.

We want peace in marriage.

There's conflict and strife in parenting.

We want peace in our family.

There's conflict and strife at work, and you want peace at work.

And all of this comes from the fact that there is conflict and strife with God, and we want peace with God.

Yesterday I took my youngest daughter Geneva to IKEA, which is a terrible idea right now.

If you're wondering where everybody is during COVID, they're in IKEA, is where they are.

The line there, we went to the Woodbridge one, the line snakes through the entire parking lot.

I mean, it is a shorter line to get onto Splash Mountain at Disneyland than to get into IKEA right now.

And there was a guy walking around, moderately homeless, well, extremely homeless looking guy pushing the shopping cart, holding an umbrella.

It's not raining, filled with stuff, and a sign, it is one hand umbrella, other hand sign pushing the shopping cart with his belly, like the guy in the DC Talk song.

And the sign declared this I know the secret to world peace.

Ask me.

It did go through our minds to ask him.

However, when we looked at the text underneath that sign, there was a smaller font that said, I'm also the one who exposed the lies behind 9-11.

So we decided not to ask him.

I didn't want to get wrapped up in a conspiracy theory conversation with the homeless guy in the IKEA parking lot.

So we let him go.

But that sign was effective.

There was no shortage of people that were willing to engage with him because what that sign is advertising is the secret to peace.

Even if you look at the messenger as untrustworthy, it's a compelling enough hook that some people were nibbling.

The secret to world peace.

This is what people are after.

There is conflict in the world.

And as I said earlier, all of those other conflicts are just presenting issues.

The heart issue is about conflict with God.

The presenting issue is conflict in marriage or parenting or at work or with relationships or nation to nation, community to community.

Those are all the presenting issues of hostility.

The heart issue, what's behind those presenting issues?

The heart issue is conflict and strife with God.

Sin with God creates conflict with others.

This is the lesson back, one of the many lessons from the fall of mankind into sin.

Adam and Eve sin.

That severs their relationship with God.

They begin hiding from God.

When God finds them, you see the conflict with each other that they have.

Adam blames his wife.

He blames the Lord for giving him his wife.

They're exiled from the garden.

They are introduced into a world where there is now hostility in marriage, in families.

They have kids.

One of their kids murders another one of their kids.

This is life in the fallen world.

When you're separated from God, you have conflict with each other.

This is a story throughout the Old Testament.

Because people have hostility towards God, that hostility overflows in their life towards each other.

They murder each other.

Lamech becomes their next character in the book of Genesis who is flagrantly immoral.

There's so much strife and hostility in the world.

God floods the world.

They start over with Noah and his family, and there's strife and hostility and immorality in Noah's own family.

God kills everybody in the earth except one family, and that one family can't get along.

There's strife and conflict as God divides the nations in Genesis 10 and then in Genesis 11.

There are strife and conflict in Abraham's own marriage and family as he refuses to stand up to Pharaoh.

This narrative starts in Genesis 12.

This is the story of the Old Testament.

Strife and conflict with God produces strife and conflict with each other.

I want you to flip, keep your finger in Ephesians 2, flip backwards, if you will, to the book of Isaiah, chapter 57.

Isaiah 57 · chapter mention

This is a critical passage to understand what we're reading this morning.

In Ephesians chapter 2, Isaiah chapter 57.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention Isaiah 57 · chapter mention

There's many visitors with us that are using the Pew Bibles.

If you go to the middle of your pew Bible, you find the book of Psalms.

Turn right.

A few pages you'll find Isaiah.

Find the 57th chapter of Isaiah.

I want to pick up in verse 14, although on your own sometime this week, I would encourage you to read the whole chapter of Isaiah.

It is all a rebuke against Israel's sin and against Israel's idolatry.

Israel is worshipping other things, and so there's conflict between them and God, which produces conflict with the nations.

God is going to expose that, and then he's going to remedy their conflict by sending them the Savior.

You look at Isaiah 57, verse 14.

Isaiah 57:14

This is before Christ was born, hundreds of years before Jesus came to the earth.

God prophesies the coming of the Savior.

It shall be said in Isaiah 57, verse 14 build up, build up, prepare the way.

Isaiah 57:14

Remove every obstruction from my people's way.

If you're familiar with the Bible's language, you know this is a declaration of what's going to happen before the Savior comes.

Before Jesus comes to the earth, John the Baptist will come and he will prepare the way for the Savior.

He will expose sin.

He'll tell people to repent and get right with the Lord so they can receive the Savior.

That's what's in view here in verse 14.

Remove every obstacle from people's path for their relationship with God.

For thus says the one speaking of God who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy.

I dwell in the high and holy place.

And before we keep going, just what a powerful intro to God right here.

It's as if the scripture is introducing God to someone who doesn't know him yet.

That God is high and lifted up.

I mean, there you're not going to mistake that house for any other house.

It's the only one that looks like that on the whole street.

God dwells in eternity.

You know where to find God?

He's high, he's lifted up, and he's in eternity.

That's where he dwells.

He is holy.

There's nobody like him.

He is high and lifted up and holy.

And then the middle of verse 15 takes such an unexpected twist.

He also dwells with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.

That's what I mean by it's unexpected.

God is high and lifted up and eternal and exalted and holy.

Time does not constrain him.

He creates time.

He's not constrained by it.

There is nobody else like him.

Nobody is higher and more exalted than he is.

Also, he's with those who are low.

As high up as you can imagine, that's where God dwells.

Also, he dwells all the way down with those who are contrite and humble and lowly in spirit, those who are laid low.

Notice what's missing there.

He bypasses all the people who are wise in their own eyes.

All the people who think they're high and lifted up.

All the people who think because of their sophistication and their education that they're exalted.

God doesn't dwell with them.

He skips them.

He's up in eternity and he bypasses all the, you know, the important people and goes right down to those who are broken and low.

And he dwells with them by it says, reviving their hearts.

This is the Old Testament's concept of regeneration.

He revives the spirit of the lowly.

He gives spiritual life to those who are low in the grounds, low in the mud.

He gives them life.

Well, how does he do that?

Well, verse 16 says, I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry.

God says he's not going to deal with people's sin forever.

This is language from Genesis 6, is where this verse is quoted from.

In Genesis 6, sin is filling the world, conflict is filling the world, strife is filling the world, and God says through Noah, I will not always contend with man.

I'm going to flood them, I'm going to destroy them.

I'm not going to deal with the sin forever.

I am going to destroy them.

But here, he says, I'm going to give those who have been destroyed life, because I don't want to always be angry with them.

The spirit would grow faint before me.

The breath of life that I made, he doesn't want all mankind to be wiped out forever.

So he's going to give life to some, to the lowly.

Because of their iniquity, verse 17 says, of the unjust gain, I was angry.

God says there are sinners in the earth, and he's angry with them.

I struck him, it says.

I hid my face and was angry.

God strikes sinners with his wrath.

The image here is of an exalted person.

God strikes him with his anger.

Well, that person, when he's struck with his anger, notice verse 17, he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart.

There's that word backsliding.

This is where the, you know, perhaps you've heard that in Christianese.

You know the language only Christians know.

Backsliding is one of the words we use.

How's your relationship with the Lord, brother?

Oh, I'm doing well, but that person's backsliding, or I might be backsliding.

What does that mean?

Backsliding?

It's not a word people use in English.

It means that you have the path that God has laid out for you.

And you've said that you're a Christian, you're following that path, but you hit conflict.

And what happens when you hit conflict?

Do you go backwards in that path?

You're sliding back.

God wants you to progress in godliness, but you're sliding back.

Notice the image of backsliding.

Where is the person backsliding to in Isaiah 57, verse 17?

Isaiah 57:17

They're backsliding into their own heart.

That's the crazy thing about this.

This is the person who says, I'm trying the best I can, I'm just listening to my heart.

No, that's going backwards.

Don't listen to your heart.

There's an old pop song called Listen to Your Heart.

I won't sing it for you.

It's a pretty song, horrible theology.

Don't ever listen to your heart.

Bad.

Your heart so bad.

Well, that's what the that's what God tells him.

I'm striking out at sinners and they are backsliding in their own hearts.

God says, I've seen that.

Verse 18, I've seen it.

But I will heal him.

I will lead him and restore him and comfort him and his mourners.

I think there's some messianic elements of this which we don't have time to look at, but I'm going to create the fruit of their lips.

What's the fruit of the lips of those who worship the Savior?

You see it in verse 19.

Peace, peace to the far and to the near, says Yahweh, and I will heal him.

Here's this description here.

This is a bird's eye view of the gospel, an eternity eye view of the gospel here.

God says, people are in sin and there is conflict because of their sin.

I'm going to strike them because of their sin.

I'm going to give out my wrath on them because of their sin.

Nevertheless, I'm going to save some that are brought low.

And I'm going to do it through the Savior.

There's going to be a messenger who comes and tells people to repent and get ready for the Savior.

How do you know when you find the Savior?

How will you recognize the Savior?

Who will He be?

Well, verse 19 says he's the one saying, Peace to those who are far and peace to those who are near.

That phrase, far and near, we looked at it last week.

It's talking about Jews and Gentiles.

It's talking about those who are close to the covenant of God and those who are far from the covenant of God.

And the Savior will come and preach peace to both of them.

On the other hand, verse 20, the wicked are like the tossing sea.

It cannot be quiet.

Its waters toss up mire and dirt.

There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.

Indeed, that is true.

You can turn back to Ephesians 2.

There is no peace for the wicked.

There is no peace at all for the wicked.

In contrast, verse 17, Jesus, our Savior, comes preaching peace.

Do you see the verse again?

To those who are far, and peace to those who are near.

This is a quote of Isaiah 57, verse 19 here in Ephesians 2.

Isaiah 57:19

You recognize a Savior because he is the one preaching peace.

That phrase to those who are far and those who are near, in Ephesians 2, we've been looking at this.

That phrase speaks specifically of Jews and Gentiles.

The Jews are near God's covenant.

They have the mark of circumcision back in chapter 2, verse 11.

You don't get much nearer to you than that.

They're in God's covenant.

God's covenant and his promise is close to them, and yet it is far from their hearts.

Far from their hearts.

Meanwhile, the Gentiles are far from God's promise.

They do not have the mark of circumcision.

They do not live in Jerusalem.

They do not live in Israel.

They are all around the world.

They are far from God's promises.

Nevertheless, the Savior preaches peace to them as well.

Let me give you an outline this morning as we go through.

I'm going to talk about how those far and near can have peace.

How those far and near can have peace.

Now, as I've mentioned this morning and in the last two weeks, the phrase far and near is referring to Jews and Gentiles.

Nevertheless, I think it has very personal and immediate applications to us as well.

If you understand the idea between far and near between those who are raised in the covenant and those who are raised outside of the covenant, I think it's very easy to see the application for people in this world that are raised in the church versus those that are raised outside of the church.

David Wells has a book on conversion where he argues that we do a service and we understand two kinds of conversion in the New Testament: those who are converted to Christ from inside of a gospel preaching church and those who are converted to Christ from outside.

I think that's a very well-made point.

I think you see it here in Ephesians 2 as well.

There are those that are raised in the church.

They're raised hearing gospel preaching, they're raised sitting in the pews right now.

And they're near the promises of God.

I hope this is the testimony of my daughters.

I hope that my daughters, when they are in the waters of baptism one day, Lord willing, that they will declare from the waters that they never don't remember a time where they didn't believe the gospel.

They were raised believing the gospel all the time.

It's always been near to them.

Nevertheless, that does not mean that their life will always be peaceful.

My wife and I watched a testimony from a friend of ours who's, I think, 20-year-old son or so was just baptized and listening to his testimony, it struck me how much that testimony represented a typical testimony for someone raised in the church.

They were raised always believing the gospel, always going to church, going to youth group, having the friends in the church, and yet really wrestling through in their heart how much of what they do they do to be pleasing to others versus pleasing to God.

How much of what they do they do out of worship of God versus conformity to those around them, versus conformity to what their parents desire.

And it's so complicated for a church kid because God designs the family that children love their parents.

And so it's very hard for a child to navigate in his heart what he's doing to be pleasing to his parents versus being pleasing to God because that's an overlap.

That's the same thing.

It's not like one is bad and one is good, right?

It's not like it's wrong to want to be pleasing to your parents.

No, God made the family that way.

It's good to want to be pleasing to the parents.

But it can create a sense of turmoil in the heart where you're working through your own salvation and it's unclear to you how much of what you do is because you love the Lord and versus because you love your family or your friends.

That can give way to peer pressure, that can give way to anxiety about your relationship with God, it can give way to a lack of peace in your relationship with the Lord because you're internally focused and you're anxious and you're unsure.

A lack of peace from those who are near.

Yeah, you have the promises.

Just like Israel had the promises and the patriarchs and the covenants and the scripture, but not the salvation that went with them.

You can be raised in the church and lack peace in your life.

You can be raised in a church and not have faith in Christ, even though you've always been taught it.

And then you work through that and you wrestle through that, and it can be a very much a time of turmoil in your heart.

That's those who are near.

There are those who are far that are not raised in the church.

I think of the testimonies, some of the testimonies we've had the last few weeks here.

I know I don't remember which ones were at the 11 o'clock service, but at the 9 o'clock service and at the evening service, we've had so many different testimonies in the last few weeks about people who are raised far, whose life was not marked by the turmoil of not knowing their relationship with the Lord, but whose life was marked by the turmoil of doing things that are illegal and encounters with law enforcement and sexual immorality and the conflict that comes from that kind of division at work and in family, all of that kind of strife.

That's the conflict of someone who is far from the gospel, the immorality that peels families apart and destroys families and ends up people in prison and then rehab and they hear the gospel through those avenues and they come to faith that way.

Very different kind of testimony from the person raised in the church.

Whether or not you're near to the gospel or far from the gospel, both categories of people need faith in the gospel.

Or they will both spend their life absence the kind of peace that comes from knowing Christ.

Romans 8 verse 7 says the carnal mind is hostile towards God.

Romans 8:7

Indeed, it cannot be pleasing to God.

Paul says Romans 8 verse 7, it cannot be pleasing to God.

Romans 8:7

The mind that is set on the things of the flesh cannot be pleasing to God.

It doesn't matter if you're near the gospel or if you're far from the gospel, we come into this world as sinners, unable to be pleasing to God.

And because of that, we cannot have peace.

We cannot have peace.

So before I go to the outline, I want you to ask yourself, which category of this do you see yourself in?

Are you in the near or are you in the far?

Are you here this morning, perhaps as a visitor or a guest or watching online and you're looking at your life, and if you're being honest, your life is far from the gospel.

The relationships in your family are corroding or corrupting.

The relationships at work, the relationships with your neighbors, the relationships in your life are falling apart.

There is not peace there.

They're not marked by peace.

Is that because of your own heart towards sin?

Are you living far from the gospel?

Even those who are near the gospel, who are here every Lord's day, do you have peace in your heart?

Is your life marked by peace?

Or are you also in this situation where there is a lack of peace in your life?

There is a lack of peace in your heart because you have not appropriated the gospel for yourself.

That's the question.

You know where conflict comes from, James says?

From desires in your heart.

Last week we looked at the vertical elements of the gospel and the horizontal elements of the gospel.

And we said you can be horizontally reconciled to each other only when you're vertically reconciled to God.

This is the same thing flipped.

Why do you have conflict with each other?

Because it's not reconciled to God.

You have conflict in your heart because you have things you want.

That's the, I mean, let's just get right to the let's just shoot straight here.

The reason you have lack of peace in your life is there are things that you want that you don't got.

And so you want to grab them, and there's other people that aren't giving them to you, and so you have conflict with those other people.

If they would just give you what you wanted, then you wouldn't have conflict with them.

But because they don't, you have conflict with them, and that you have strife in your heart, and that strife manifests itself until you lash out on them or you you know you sin against them in some way.

That sin is not satisfied then.

Just sinning against that person doesn't make the conflict go away, it exasperates it.

Will keep growing your whole life.

Eventually it produces death.

The wages of sin is death, first in this world and then in eternity, you will die and be sent to hell because of your sin, where God's wrath will never be satisfied.

The wages of sin is death and it always pays.

So you have conflict with other people because you're not right with God.

Fortunately, the Bible says, even though your mind cannot be at peace with God, it's impossible for it to be at peace with God, but God can make a way to be peaceful with you.

God can make peace with you.

And he does through in three ways.

First, he makes peace with you through the Son.

And this is what you see in verse 18.

For through him we have peace.

Through him, this is the preposition.

It means, you know, through.

We have peace, and it's coming through the channel of Jesus Christ.

He is the door to peace.

Notice that verse 14 of Ephesians 2 says He himself is our peace.

Verse 17 says he came and he preached peace.

This is a phenomenal insight for me as a pastor that Jesus preaches a fundamentally different way than I do, because Jesus preaches himself, and I can't preach myself.

You know, a pastor says, hey, everybody follow me, that's not a church, that's a cult.

That's the word we have for that.

But Jesus, when he preaches, he tells everybody, follow me.

He is peace and he preaches peace, which is another way of saying he's preaching himself.

In all of Jesus' lessons, all of his sermons, all of his miracles, all of his messages, he's pointing everybody back to himself because he can bring peace.

He is peace.

This marks his entire ministry.

Jesus preaches peace because he is our peace, so every word he says in his ministry is about himself, and it is so that we can have peace with God.

At his birth, Luke 2, verse 14.

Luke 2:14

The angels minister to him at his birth, and they declare, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among those with whom he's well pleased.

Peace on earth among those with whom he's well pleased.

It is not peace on earth to everybody on the earth through the birth of Christ.

The only people who experience peace through the birth of Christ are those with whom God is pleased through his Son Jesus Christ.

And this marks Jesus' whole ministry.

He sends out the 72 to go preach in all the towns.

Remember, they go town to town, and what do they say?

They're supposed to go to a town and they're supposed to find a person of peace and declare, peace be upon this house.

That's not just some shalom Jewish greeting.

It's an actual encounter.

The apostles are supposed to find people that are looking for the Savior, that have peace between them and God through their faith in the Savior, and they enter into a relationship of peace with them.

That's Luke 10, verse 5.

Luke 10:5

The week Jesus was crucified, the week he was betrayed, his last week of life.

He goes up on the hill, he looks over Jerusalem, he weeps over Jerusalem.

This is Luke 19, verse 42.

Luke 19:42

He says, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I wish that even you, even you, would have known the things that make for peace.

That Jesus' whole ministry is to bring peace between God and man.

They reject Jesus Christ, so they reject peace with God.

After his resurrection, Jesus goes in rendezvous with his disciples, appears with them.

Remember what he tells them?

Peace be with you.

That's Luke 24, verse 36.

Luke 24:36

Peace be with you.

Jesus' life and ministry is bracketed by peace.

It begins with the angels declaring his peace.

He ends at his ascension declaring peace to his apostles and to his disciples.

Everything about him brings peace.

His life represents peace with God.

His death makes peace with God.

Everything is about peace with God.

You want to know what a human life looks like that's at peace with God?

You look at the life of Christ.

He was perfectly at peace with God in all that he did.

He understood he could only do his father's will.

He was sent to do the will of his father.

He was at peace with his father.

His life looks like that.

It doesn't mean it was always peaceful with others.

In our relationships, where we have conflict and strife, there's enough blame to go around.

Husband and wife are having conflict in their marriage.

Look, you're both at fault.

You're both sinners.

You're both wrong.

When Jesus is having conflict with others, there's not a both sides to that story.

It's always the other person's fault.

Because he is sinless.

He's in perfect peace with God.

So if people have conflict with Christ, it's because their ultimate conflict is with God.

I hope you understand that, right?

People don't hate Jesus because they don't like Jesus.

In fact, they kind of like him.

They hate Jesus because they hate God, whom Jesus represents.

And the same thing, of course, is true today, I think, in the persecuted church.

People don't persecute Christians because they don't like the Christians.

You know, the people that know the believers they're persecuting actually feel a little bit bad about it.

They like that guy.

Shame we have to burn his house down.

I mean, that's their attitude.

They are angry at believers because they're angry at God.

They don't like believers because they don't like God.

That's the hard issue.

You look at Jesus, he was at peace with God.

And so even when others were hostile towards him, he had confidence, didn't he?

I mean, the world is on fire around him.

He's in a literal storm and he is asleep.

He has such confidence in God's kindness and goodness and providence and control.

His life represents peace with God.

His death represents peace with God.

Because in his death, God has wrath for people that he is going to pour out.

Our sin demands judgment.

God is a just judge and will judge us for our sin.

His wrath is stored up.

The reason we don't have peace with God is because we're sinners.

Our sin deserves wrath, and God is going to pour out wrath.

He's going to strike us in the mouth, is the language of Isaiah 57.

God is going to punch us.

He's going to punch us with wrath.

Not once, not twice or thrice, but repeatedly for eternity.

He's going to pour out his wrath on us.

And Jesus, in his death, steps between the wrath of God and us and takes on God's wrath for his elect in his own body and dies on the cross, bearing the penalty for sin.

He absorbs the wrath.

This is what he means when peace on earth, among whom he is well pleased.

He takes on that wrath so that his death can legitimately bear peace.

It's all about peace from birth to death, cradle to grave.

It's all about bringing peace to the world.

His perfect death was a substitute for our sin.

Our sin is what alienated us from God.

Therefore, his death can make peace between us and God.

Do you understand that he is the shepherd of the sheep?

He is the door for the sheep.

There is no way to God.

The sheep can't get to God except going through him.

He is the door.

That image of him being the door is the shepherd that takes the sheep out in the field.

He doesn't go all the way back to the city at night.

He makes a little pen for them, a makeshift pen, maybe out of mud and branches and brush and stuff, and he hems them in, and the shepherd lays down at the door, and the shepherd is literally the door for the sheep.

They cannot get out unless they go over his body.

You cannot have peace with God unless you go through the body of Jesus Christ.

There is no other road to God, there's no other path to God, there's no other door to God.

You have no access to peace with God except through the Son.

God is triune.

One God in three persons Father, Son, and Spirit.

If you want peace with the Father, you have to go through the Son.

There's not a fourth God somewhere else that gives you access.

There's not a fourth person in the Trinity somewhere else that gives you access to God.

No.

Your only access to the Father is through the Son.

It's through the Son, which leads, of course, to those of you keeping up with my Trinitarian math here.

Those far and near can have peace through the Son in the Spirit.

Even the Son and the Spirit are not two different doors to the Father.

They're the same door.

The Son is the door, but for access to the door, you can only go into the Son in the Spirit.

You can only have access to the Son through the Spirit.

Father, Son, Spirit are the three persons of the Trinity.

You cannot have access to the Father except through the Son, and you cannot be brought to the Son except by the Spirit.

The three persons of the Trinity are in this together.

Do you get that?

They're cooperating together.

This is the point of Ephesians 1.

The Father predestines us for the Son to be our redeemer, for the Spirit to draw us.

They're working together.

And the Spirit draws us.

You're coming to faith in the Spirit.

This word in, you could also even translate it by, it's the means here.

The Son is the channel to the Father.

The Spirit is the means by which you enter that channel.

That's what Paul is trying to communicate here in verse 18.

Through him being Jesus, we both, meaning those far and near, have access, and we'll look at the word access in a few minutes, in one spirit.

There's only one spirit.

There's only one Holy Spirit.

There's not different spirits of God with different access to God.

There is one Holy Spirit.

And if you want access to the Father, it must be through the Son.

And if you want access to the Father through the Son, it must be in the Spirit.

By the power of the Spirit.

This is how the Spirit operates.

There's an actual union the Holy Spirit creates described in Ephesians 1, where he seals all of our hearts as the guaranteer of our salvation.

I want you to get.

No one can even see the kingdom of God unless the Holy Spirit causes them to be regenerated, born from above, born again, a new birth.

That's what the Holy Spirit does to you.

You're dead in your sins and transgressions.

You place your faith in God, and the Holy Spirit causes you to come alive.

So the first thing the Holy Spirit does to give you access to God through the Son is gives you faith and regeneration.

Now you are regenerated.

The Holy Spirit has given you life.

You're now spiritually alive.

The Holy Spirit doesn't leave you, but he seals you.

It's from Ephesians 1, and he now convicts you of sin.

Jesus, in one of his last conversations with the disciples, he said he was going to go away.

He said it's to your betterment that I go away.

I will send you a helper, the Holy Spirit, who will convict you concerning righteousness.

So the Spirit that gave you faith and made you alive is now dwelling inside of you, and he's convicting you of sin in your life.

When a believer encounters sin in his life, what does a believer do?

Fights it, right?

Or run from it.

You got some choices.

You find sin in your life, get out of town, or turn and fight.

You got to do one of those two things.

Don't give in.

That's bad.

Okay, that's the third option.

Bad.

You fight or you run.

You get away from the sin or you take it on and you fight it and you go to war against it.

You recognize that's not how people without the spirit respond to sin.

People without the Holy Spirit respond to sin by giving into it and then by embracing it and by doubling down on it.

The Lord says, I strike them in my wrath, and what do they do?

They double down on their sin.

They encounter God's wrath because of sin, and people without the Spirit say, I'm not changing anything.

I'm going to pursue my sin.

I'm going to follow my sin.

You know, a neutral party comes in and looks at this person's life and says, Your life is falling apart because you're living in sin.

It doesn't take Scotland Yard here to figure this out.

Your life has conflict and strife because you're living in sin.

But people don't want to recognize that.

They double down on their sin.

They're like, I'm going to live in sin because I want to live in sin.

Like, hey, it's killing your life.

It's burning your house down.

I like it.

I'm living in it.

I'm not letting it go.

It's my sin.

It's very different than how believers respond to sin.

Believers respond to sin by confessing, repenting, fighting, accountability, memorizing verses.

You're going to war, I guess.

You're doing things to fight your sin.

What makes you different than the non-believer in that regard?

It's the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who convicts you of sin and exposes you to it.

Molds you.

How does the Holy Spirit convict you of sin?

By applying the Scripture to your own life.

The Scripture is spiritual.

These are spiritual words spoken to spiritual people.

The person apart from faith can't understand the words in the scripture.

It's foolishness to them.

They don't understand it.

But the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to perceive the truth in the word, opens your ears to hear the truth in the word, works in your heart to apply the truth in your word.

This is the process of sanctification.

So the Holy Spirit gives you regeneration, then gives you conviction, and then gives you sanctification, gives you faith in spiritual life, gives you conviction about sin, and then sanctifies you by helping you apply the scripture to your life so that you grow in godliness.

This is all the Spirit's work in your life.

You understand that?

This is what the Holy Spirit is doing to give you access to the Father through the Son.

And He doesn't stop there.

He doesn't just sanctify you.

He actually causes you to start serving in the church now.

The church is a spiritual body.

We're a spiritual organization.

You know, the government will refer to churches as a spiritual organization or religious organization.

When the government says that churches are spiritual, what they mean by that is we're doing religious type things.

That's not what we mean by that when we call ourselves spiritual.

We are a spiritual organization because the Holy Spirit dwells in every member of this church.

That's what makes us spiritual, the actual Holy Spirit abides with us.

That's why we're a spiritual operation here.

Because it's the Holy Spirit who is doing the work.

So every believer in this church has the Holy Spirit that unites us together.

We are one church because we all share one spirit.

And so we're all serving.

Each of us have different spiritual gifts to serve in the church.

This is how the Holy Spirit builds the church in unity.

This is why disunity is such a sin in the church.

Because we all have the same spirit.

And because we all have fellowship, we see a baptism, we see somebody baptized into our body, we take communion where we all take one bread and drink one cup.

It's a demonstration of the unity we have.

We're serving in the same spiritual body together.

And this is causes us to feel peace.

There's an actual peace we feel from this.

There's an actual peace that comes from us being reconciled to God that we now have with others.

Before faith in Christ, we had hostility with others.

We come to faith in Christ, we have a unity with others just by not even a unity we have to pursue, a unity that is real and immediate because we all possess the same spirit.

It's a peace that is divinely birthed and divinely nourished in our hearts.

That's why the church has unity.

That's why Paul can say we all have access in one spirit.

It's a unity we have for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Sickness cannot mar it, death cannot sever it, and loss ought not to shake it.

Whatever we go through in this life, we recognize the Spirit abides with us as a guarantee.

So if you're far from God, you have access to Him in the Holy Spirit through the Son.

If you're near to God, you have access to Him in the Holy Spirit through the Son.

The person we're working towards here is as far and near can have peace through the Son in the Spirit, and this is a peace that is to or towards the Father.

Remember, the heart issue in every conflict in the earth is sin with God.

It expresses ourselves in sin towards others.

When you're reconciled to God, you're going to have peace with others because one precedes the other.

You want to waste your time?

Pursue peace with people that don't have the Holy Spirit.

It'll be so temporary.

And of course, we're called to do that, by the way.

The Bible calls us to do that.

You're supposed to live at peace with those around you as much as you're able, is why Paul says that as much as you're able part.

I mean, do your best, but let's be real here.

But for believers, we have peace towards the Father because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Now I say we get back to this word in the middle of verse 18.

We have access, is the word, the word access, and have access, it makes it a almost sound like a verb, almost like a present participle or a present perfect year.

We have access.

In the Greek, it's a noun.

It's prosagogi, which is a fun word to say.

Prosagogi.

It's an unusual word, and it means a prosagogi in Greek is someone who introduces you to somebody important.

You don't have access to that important person, but you have access to the prosagoge.

The prosagogi can introduce you to the important person.

So you want to go see the president of the United States, you can't just show up at the White House and ring the doorbell and say you're here.

Have any of you tried that?

I'm pretty sure it won't work.

You have to have a connection.

You have to have somebody there who knows him and who can get you on a schedule and who will greet you and introduce you and walk you in and introduce you to the president.

That's a prosagogi.

And it's interesting that that's the word that Paul uses here.

You want access to the Father.

You need somebody to do the introduction.

Because he is high and lifted up and in eternity.

He dwells in holiness, he is high and exalted, and you are all the way down here.

How can you get from there to there?

It says in Isaiah 57 that the Father will minister to you through the Holy Spirit, but you still need the introducer.

That is back to the Son.

So you have access to the Father through the Son.

He is the one who introduces you.

So the Son being the redeemer, he's redeeming you to the Father.

It's a slave market analogy.

You are a slave to sin.

The Son purchases your redemption.

So that's this whole image here that your access and your peace is not just neutrality.

You have peace with the person you used to have hostility with, which is the Father.

Everything is about the Father here.

Your sin was against him.

The Son is a mediator to him.

The Spirit draws you to faith in the Son to the Father.

This is why Jesus can tell.

He can tell Philip.

Philip says, How are we going to where are you going?

We're going to recognize you, Father.

We don't know the Father.

And Jesus says, Philip, how long have we been together?

If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.

Because Jesus introduces you to him.

This is why the Bible says 1 John 4 12, no one has ever seen God.

Okay, he's in eternity, holy, high, and lifted up.

1 Timothy 6, verse 15.

1 Timothy 6:15

God is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, who alone has immorality, who dwells in unapproachable light, who no one has ever seen or can see.

Period.

You can't see God.

You cannot see the Father.

However, comma, John 1, verse 18, no one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

John 1:18

You cannot see the Father.

Jesus reveals the Father to you by coming to the earth incarnate, you have access to God through Christ.

This is why Ephesians 2, verse 18 can say you have access in one spirit to the Father.

Ephesians 2:18

He's in eternity, he's so high and lifted up, but you can now approach him.

You can now approach him.

And when this happens, when you have access to the Father, so much more to say, they'll just have to wait, I guess, for next week.

But you have access to the Father.

This is for those who are near, those who are far.

Both of them, verse 17 says.

Both of them, verse 18 says, now verse 19, you're no longer strangers and aliens.

This is so important to the Jews.

The Jews thought they had a special privileged place to God because they descended from Abraham.

If they're in a relationship with Abraham, they have a special access to God.

And Jesus tells them that's not true.

You had the covenants, you had the promises, you had the patriarchs, you did not have salvation.

All the promises God gave you did not, in fact, give you special access to God.

You squandered them.

Matthew 3, verse 9, Jesus says, Don't say to yourself we have Abraham as our father.

Matthew 3:9

I tell you, God can make descendants from Abraham from these rocks.

I don't know how that would work.

That's what Jesus said.

Don't think you're in a special place because you're Abraham's descendants.

God can make the rocks Abraham's descendants if he wanted to.

I tell you, Jesus says, Many will come from the east and from the west, from far away.

And they will recline at the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of this kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So Jesus says it doesn't matter if you're raised near the covenant or far from the covenant, if you are living in Sin, you have no peace in this world, and hell is your future.

A place where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, where God pours out his wrath on people because of their sin.

That's the future that waits you.

It awaits those who are near the covenant, and it awaits those who are far from the covenant.

Near the gospel, far from the gospel, hell is the destination for all of them.

For all of them.

Except for those who have access to the Father in the Spirit through the Son.

Because now the wrath from the Father is not going to be poured out in hell, but is poured out on the cross to Christ.

So it's a fundamentally different access.

Others will encounter the Father through the fires of hell.

But for those with whom he is well pleased, as the angels say, you encounter the Father through the Son in the Spirit, adopted into his family, no longer strangers and aliens, no longer far away, but fellow citizens.

This is a big pill to swallow.

I mean, you understand, even in the church, you have somebody who's living their life apart from the gospel and in all kinds of immorality and division and causing all kinds of conflict and strife, and they get saved.

The moment they get saved, they are now fully part of the household of faith.

There's no second-class citizens in the church.

It's not like there's on the left the mature Christians, on the right, the slacker villain baby Christians divide up.

There's not two classes of citizens in the church.

Every believer is on equal ground at the foot of the cross.

We're all low, okay?

We're all low.

We're all low.

There's not two kinds of believers.

There's only one.

People who have access to the Father through the Son and the Spirit.

And there we have unity in the church.

It's hard for us to believe.

Imagine how that would be for the Jews to hear that the Gentiles in Ephesus, where they worship goddess Diana, those people can come to faith and be at the same table as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in that in the kingdom.

And it blows their mind.

And Paul says, that's because they have the Spirit.

They're drawn to faith in the Son.

That's the future that awaits those who have peace reclining in heaven with the Lord.

But for those who don't have faith in the Son, the words of Isaiah 57 come back to us.

We'll end where we begin.

The wicked are like the tossing sea, it cannot be quiet.

Its waters toss up mire and dirt.

There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.

Lord, we know those apart from you have no peace with you and have no peace with others because of their hostility towards you.

So I pray for anyone who's here today that is listening to this message.

I pray that they would be drawn to faith in you through the ministry of your Holy Spirit, and that they would find peace because you are our peace.

You preach peace to us through your word.

You are our peace.

For those of us in the gospel, we are overcome with a joy and gratitude and thankfulness that you saved us.

Not because of deeds we've done in the flesh, not because we worked hard or anything like that.

Certainly not because we deserved it, but you saved us because of your mercy and your kindness which you've shown us in Christ.

What a joy.

What a joy.

So we're thankful for the peace we have with you.

May you cause that to spill over to other areas of our life.

Give us peace with others because we're united to one another through our faith in you.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.